March 29, 1988 Moscow. The official visit of US President Ronald Reagan to the country, which he himself had previously called the "evil empire", went very well. The Russians showed their fabulous hospitality on a grand scale, and in negotiations they were as pliable as plasticine. Only one moment darkened Reagan's mood when, after another round of talks at the highest level Gorbachev asked to leave them alone with the American president - for a conversation "without protocol."

Collage © L! FE Photo: © RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin

Mr. President, I have to upset you, ”Gorbachev sighed when they were left alone, except, of course, the translator. - I made inquiries about the person you asked me about ... I'm very sorry, but I can't do anything - this person is already dead, the sentence has been carried out.

Too bad, ”Reagan echoed. - My guys asked very much for him. In a sense, he is also your Russian hero.

Perhaps, - Gorbachev threw up his hands, - but he was convicted in full accordance with the law.

And Gorbachev stood up, making it clear that the conversation was over.

Who was this man, whose fate the leaders of the two world superpowers were concerned about?

CIA Director James Woolsey called the man the "jewel in the crown" and the most helpful agent recruited during the Cold War. We are talking about GRU General Dmitry Polyakov, who worked for the US CIA for more than 25 years, supplying Washington with valuable information about the political, economic and military plans of the Kremlin. He was the very "sleeping agent" who at one time was defended from counterintelligence by the chief of the KGB, Yuri Andropov.

Service addict career

Dmitry Fedorovich Polyakov was born on July 6, 1921 in the town of Starobelsk, which stands in the very center of the Luhansk region. His father worked as an accountant at a local enterprise, his mother was an employee.

In 1939, Polyakov, after graduating from high school, entered the Kiev Command Artillery School. He met the Great Patriotic War as a commander of an artillery platoon. In the hardest battles near Yelnya he was wounded. For military exploits he was awarded two military orders - Patriotic War and the Red Star, many medals. The archives retained the award list of Captain Polyakov, the battery commander of the 76th separate artillery battalion, who was then fighting in Karelia: "Being at the turn of the Kesteng direction, with the fire of his battery he destroyed one anti-tank gun with a crew of 4 people, suppressed three artillery batteries, scattered and partially destroyed a group of enemy soldiers and officers with a total number of 60 people, thereby ensuring the exit of the 3OSB reconnaissance group without losses ... "

In 1943, Captain Polyakov himself switched to artillery reconnaissance, then to the military. After the war, he was sent to study at the intelligence department of the Frunze Military Academy, then he was transferred to work at the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff.

They immediately took Polyakov seriously and without haste began to teach all the secret wisdom of the skill of a cloak and a dagger - how to recruit the right person how to lay a cache and get rid of surveillance, how to receive coded messages from the Center and prepare your way of escape.

In the service, Polyakov showed himself to be a real "service addict" - he studied and worked from morning to night, even spent the night in office rooms. The bosses just threw up their hands in surprise: how, with such a busy schedule of life, Polyakov was able to marry the beautiful Nina and have two sons - Igor and Pavlik.

In 1951, the leaders of the GRU decided to send Polyakov - as the best of the best - on his first business trip to the United States. He went under the guise of the post of an employee of the Soviet mission at the UN Military Staff Committee.

He served in the position of a "protector" - that was how ordinary agents were called in operational slang, who ensured the activities of the Soviet illegal agents.

They were a kind of intelligence worker ants, blindly following the orders of the GRU resident: in one place one had to take from the cache one container disguised as an ordinary cobblestone, and put another "stone" in its place, fix a conditional signal in another place, and leave it in the third. car and leave unnoticed for half a day. The work, though simple, but dangerous: at that time the era of "McCarthyism" had already begun in the United States and every Soviet diplomat was literally under the FBI cap. Sometimes Polyakov had to circle around the cache left by an unknown agent for days on end in order to confuse the surveillance. And again he proved himself to be the best agent - not a single failure in the five years of his "watch" in New York!

Resident error

After completing a five-year "shift" in New York, Polyakov returned to Moscow - for retraining and promotion. He returned to the United States in 1959 with the rank of colonel and the position of Deputy GRU resident for illegal work in the United States.

And in the same year, a tragedy occurred in the Polyakov family, which crossed out his whole life. The eldest son Igor in the United States fell ill with the flu, which caused a complication - cerebral edema.

The boy could have been saved, but this required putting him in an American clinic. And pay for the treatment - at Soviet intelligence officers and diplomats had no American health insurance back then.

Polyakov rushed to the resident Lieutenant General Boris Ivanov:

Boris Semenovich, help! Allow me to use the funds of the special fund to encourage agents. I'll give it all back later, you know me, - asked Polyakov.

I can not! - cut off Ivanov, who served in the NKVD since the days of the "Great Terror". - You know, I can allocate this money only by order from the Center!

So request the Center! Please! ”Begged Polyakov.

Boris Semyonovich Ivanov and Ivan Alexandrovich Serov Collage © L! FE Photo: © Wikipedia.org Creative Commons

General Ivanov made a request to the Center, but the head of the GRU, General of the Army Ivan Serov, imposed a resolution: "Refuse to use the funds of the special fund inappropriately. If an operation is needed, let them be taken to Moscow!"

While the boy was being prepared for the flight, the irreparable happened: Igor died.

The death of his son left a black burn in the soul of Colonel Polyakov. Moreover, the resident Ivanov soon left for Moscow - for a promotion. The bosses love well-trained performers.

And then Colonel Polyakov decided to take revenge. And to his bosses, and to the whole soulless system that doomed his child to death because of the rules of accountability.

Recruitment

On November 16, 1961, during a social reception organized at the house of the head of the American military mission at the UN Military Staff Committee, General O "Neili, Colonel Polyakov himself turned to the owner of the house with a request:

Could you arrange for me to have a secret one-on-one meeting with any of the American intelligence officials?

What for? - General O "Neili looked into the eyes of the Soviet intelligence officer, about whom there were rumors in the American mission that he was the most inveterate Stalinist.

For the transmission of important military-political information, - he snapped.

In an hour they will approach you, ”the admiral replied. - Have some champagne for now.

CIA agent Sandy Grims, who worked with Polyakov, recalls that he always emphasized that he volunteered to work for the Americans himself, and not for the sake of money, but purely for ideological reasons.

Of course, he received royalties from us, but these were very meager amounts - about a tenth of the money that we usually paid to agents of a much lower level. But Polyakov emphasized that he did not need money. I think that he believed that the United States was not strong enough to fight the Soviet system, that we would not have a chance if he did not participate on our side, - recalled Grims.

Collage © L! FE Photo: © Wikipedia.org Creative Commons, flickr Creative Commons

According to the estimates of the Americans, for 25 years of work for the American special services, Polyakov received only 94 thousand dollars - however, not counting expensive gifts and souvenirs. Being a passionate hunter, he adored expensive guns, which he managed to take to Moscow by diplomatic mail, not paying any attention to the sidelong glances of his colleagues. Polyakov also loved to make furniture with his own hands, he often ordered American intelligence officers to bring for him either expensive American tools or bronze nails for upholstering sofas. For his wife, he ordered jewelry, but not too expensive.

In the service of the FBI

But no matter how humanly understandable Polyakov's motives, nevertheless, betrayal remains a betrayal, because the decision to go into the service of the enemy affected not only Polyakov himself and his family, but also the colleagues, comrades and subordinates of the deputy resident, who risked their lives for the sake of their country.

It was the lives of colleagues that the defector sacrificed. Of course, high political motives are good, reasoned his new masters, but it is best to immediately tie the traitor-deserter with the blood of his colleagues.

And at the very first meeting, representatives of the FBI demanded that Polyakov name six names of the embassy's encryptors - this is the most main secret any residency, which is constantly being hunted by counterintelligence.

Polyakov named. Then the Americans set a date for the second meeting - at a hotel with the intriguing name of The Trotsky.

At this meeting, at the request of the head of the Soviet department of the FBI, Bill Branigan, Polyakov dictated a text to a tape recorder with the officers of the Soviet military intelligence working in New York. Then he signed an agreement to cooperate with the FBI.

Later, Bill Branigan recalled that at first the FBI, where Polyakov was given the nickname Tophat, that is, "top hat", did not really trust the Soviet "defector." The Americans believed that Polyakov deliberately portrayed himself as a traitor in order to reveal the existing scheme of the work of counterintelligence units in the US intelligence services.

Therefore, the FBI agents who spoke with Polyakov demanded from him more and more classified information about the American agents recruited Soviet intelligence, expecting that sooner or later he will give himself away.

Polyakov's first victim was a particularly valuable GRU agent David Dunlap, a staff sergeant for the National Security Agency (NSA). Feeling he was being followed, Dunlap knew he had been betrayed. And at the very moment when the capture group was breaking into his apartment, the sergeant committed suicide.

Next, Polyakov turned in Frank Bossard, a high-ranking official of the British Ministry of Aviation, the information from whom went to the very top. Bossard was recruited back in 1951, when he served in the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Division of British intelligence MI6. He worked in Bonn, where he interviewed scientists who had fled from the GDR and the USSR. For a long time, Frank supplied Soviet intelligence officers with important information about the state air force Great Britain, transferred drawings of the latest aircraft and plans for individual combat operations. As a result, Bossard was caught red-handed while photographing classified documents. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison.

The third victim of the traitor is Staff Sergeant Corneulius Drummond, the first black soldier to be promoted to the position of assistant chief of the secret section of the US Navy headquarters. He himself went to Soviet intelligence and for five years, virtually free of charge, transferred to the GRU all the more or less significant documents from the chief's desk. According to American experts, Staff Sergeant Drummond caused such material damage that the United States had to spend several hundred million dollars to restore the necessary state of secrecy.

Interestingly, the FBI leaders deliberately arranged the arrest of Drummond for the arrival in the United States of the then Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. One can only imagine how Gromyko felt when, after speaking at the UN General Assembly, he was bombarded with questions about the arrests of Soviet spies. As a result, Drummond was sentenced to life imprisonment without the right to appeal.

Polyakov also betrayed Air Force Sergeant Herbert Bockenhaupt, who worked in the secret part of the US Strategic Air Command headquarters and transmitted to the GRU all information about ciphers, codes, and cryptographic systems of the US Air Force. As a result, Bockenhaupt was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The price of betrayal

Following Polyakov began to hand over the Soviet intelligence officers. The first FBI to arrest liaison agent Cornelius Drumont - GRU officers Yevgeny Prokhorov and Ivan Vyrodov. Despite the status of diplomats, the FBI members beat the Soviet agents to a pulp and brought them to a secret prison. When the Americans saw that it was impossible to get anything from the officers of the GRU by torture and intimidation, they were thrown out half-dead near the Soviet embassy. On the same day they were declared "persona non grata" and given 48 hours to collect.

Polyakov also betrayed a married couple of illegal intelligence agents known by the name of Sokolovs, who had just gone through a difficult legalization process. After that, the FBI even imbued with confidence in the traitor and did so to divert possible suspicions from Polyakov - literally on the eve of the arrest of illegal immigrants, FBI agents arrested a married couple - Ivan and Alexandra Yegorovs, Soviet employees of the UN secretariat who did not have diplomatic immunity. The Egorovs went through the interrogation conveyor, but did not break down. Nevertheless, in the press, everything was presented exactly as if it was they who betrayed the illegal immigrants. As a result, the Yegorovs served several years in prison, their career was broken.

The fate of the illegal Karl Tuomi, whom Polyakov also betrayed, turned out differently. Tuomi was the son of American communists who came to the Soviet Union in 1933 and became employees of the Foreign Department of the NKVD. Karl also became an employee of the USSR Ministry of State Security, and in 1957 he was transferred to help the GRU to carry out an important assignment in the United States. He legalized in 1958 as Robert White, a successful Chicago businessman with an interest in the latest developments in aviation and electronics. In 1963, he was arrested on a tip from Polyakov and, under threat of the electric chair, agreed to become a "double agent." However, the GRU suspected something and called Tuomi to Moscow. But he categorically refused to return, leaving his wife and children in the Soviet Union.

Crucial Miss Macy

But the biggest blow to the GRU was the betrayal of the legendary Soviet intelligence agent Macy - Maria Dobrova. She was born in 1907 in a working-class family in Petrograd, received a good education - in 1927 she graduated from a music college in vocals and piano, as well as Higher Courses foreign languages at the Academy of Sciences. Soon she married a border guard officer Boris Dobrov, gave birth to a son, Dmitry. But in 1937, the well-established life seemed to have fallen into tartar. First, my husband died - in battles with the Japanese on Far East where he was sent on a business trip. In the same year, his son Dmitry also died of diphtheria.

In order to somehow get away from grief, she went to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to volunteer for civil war to Spain.

In battles with the Nazis, Franco Maria Dobrova spent more than a year, earning the Order of the Red Star. Returning, she entered the Leningrad University, where she was found by the Great Patriotic War and the blockade. And Maria got a job as a nurse in a hospital, where she worked until Victory. Then a sharp turn takes place in her life: she goes to work at the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, as a translator, leaves to work at the Soviet embassy in Colombia. Returning home 4 years later, she becomes a full-time employee of the GRU, or rather, illegal military intelligence.

In the United States, she legalized herself as Miss Macy - or rather, as Glen Marrero Podeschi, the owner of her own beauty salon in New York.

Soon her salon became a real "ladies' club" for the ladies from the New York establishment and artistic bohemia. Wives of congressmen, generals, famous journalists and businessmen shared secrets with her. Moreover, most often the information received by "Miss Macy" in women's conversations was more complete than all other data obtained through other channels. For example, Mrs. Macy's friend was Marilyn Monroe, who casually talked with President Kennedy about the limits of the concessions that the White House could make during negotiations with Moscow. The very next day, a printout of this conversation lay on Nikita Khrushchev's desk.

Having received a tip from Polyakov, the American counterintelligence established surveillance of the beauty salon, but Maria Dobrova somehow sensed the danger. Having warned the station, she decided to hide from the country. And she would have succeeded, but the route of her evacuation was made by Colonel Polyakov himself.

In Chicago, where she stayed in one of the respectable hotels, FBI agents tried to detain her.

When an uninvited "maid" knocked on her room, she understood everything.

Wait, I'm not ready yet, - Maria answered calmly, retreating to the window. Cars with flashing lights and armed agents were parked below, all exits from the hotel were blocked.

Open immediately, it's the FBI. ”The door crackled with powerful battering ramming. - Open quickly!

But before the door had time to collapse, as Maria rushed down from the window.

Many years later, the KGB officers who interrogated General Polyakov asked if he felt sorry for Maria Dobrova and other illegal immigrants loyal to them, whom he had ruined their lives. Polyakov drew in his head, as if from a blow, and then calmly said:

This was our job. Can I have another cup of coffee?

With a stone in my bosom

In 1962, Colonel Polyakov was recalled to Moscow and appointed to a new position in the central office of the GRU General Staff. And the FBI agents handed him over for communication to the American intelligence officers from the CIA, who assigned the colonel a new operational pseudonym - Bourbon.

Also, CIA agents gave him a special spy micro-camera and taught him how to use special containers for transferring microfilms.

The first laying of the cache took place in October 1962 - on the instructions of the Americans, Polyakov re-shot the secret telephone directory of the General Staff right in his office. He put the film in an iron container, which he covered with orange plasticine on all sides, and then rolled it in brick chips - as a result, he turned out to be an ordinary brick fragment, completely indistinguishable from thousands of others. He laid the container under a bench in the conditional place of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure - as it turned out, in a very crowded place, but, apparently, the Americans simply did not know about the existence of other parks in Moscow.

Having laid a cache, he - literally in front of a police squad - left a conventional sign on the post - ink blot, as if accidentally splashed out of a broken fountain pen.

Central Park of Culture and Rest named after M. Gorky. Photo: © RIA Novosti / L. Bergoltsev

The next hiding place the Americans asked to leave it in an old telephone booth near the house on Lesteva Street - right in front of the cadets' dormitory High school KGB them. F.E.Dzerzhinsky. It was here that the cadets ran to call home, but the American agent did not know this - there was no sign on the building.

Calling the agents to a meeting, he announced that from now on he himself would develop for the CIA a plan for laying caches and conditioned signals. Moreover, he himself will direct his espionage work, determining the schedule of his activity. And most importantly - no more personal meetings! Communication only through hiding places and the New York Times newspaper, which Polyakov read according to his official duties. If Polyakov himself wanted to send a message to the Americans, he wrote an article for the magazine "Okhota i Hunting Economy", of which he was a regular contributor.

The Americans agreed to the new rules of the game - just the day before, Colonel of the GRU Oleg Penkovsky, who also worked for the CIA, was arrested in Moscow. As it turned out later, Penkovsky was accidentally surrendered by the Americans themselves, who held secret meetings with him once a week in the most crowded places.

Polyakov took into account all Penkovsky's mistakes, and this allowed him to remain above suspicion for a long time - especially when the GRU began to purge and search for Penkovsky's accomplices. Counterintelligence officers then, literally under a microscope, filtered hundreds of officers' personal files, but the GRU could not imagine that the traitor himself would coordinate the search for the "mole".

Nixon's personal agent

But even the most careful instructions of Polyakov could not save him from the initiative of the Americans. Wanting to help Bourbon, they published an article in American newspapers about the beginning of the trial of the Yegorovs, in which Polyakov's surname was also mentioned - they say, some traitor betrayed him. After this article, Polyakov was removed from the American line and transferred to the GRU directorate, which was engaged in intelligence in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Not wishing to incur even greater suspicion, he announced to the CIA curators that he was going into "sleep" mode.

Soon Polyakov passed all the checks and even went for a promotion - he was sent as a GRU resident to the USSR Embassy in Burma. After working in this country for 4 years, he moved to the department associated with illegal intelligence in China. During all this time, he only once violated the "sleeping" regime, when he submitted a report to the CIA on the contradictions in relations between the USSR and the PRC - just on the eve of President Nixon's visit to Beijing, which became a brilliant diplomatic success for the Americans and a turning point in the Cold War.

After that, the attitude of the CIA to Bourbon changed radically: from a source of classified information, Polyakov turned into a figure of influence and a particularly valuable agent. And the Americans began to help make his career. So, when Polyakov served as a GRU resident in India, American curators began to let him down to recruit Americans. For example, one of the first to be recruited was Sergeant Robert Martsinovsky from the staff of the American attaché. Next, in the interests of the case, the CIA "donated" several more military personnel - later all of them were sentenced to death penalty for espionage in favor of the USSR.

Thanks to the help of the Americans, Polyakov soon gained fame as almost the most successful intelligence officer in the entire GRU system. His career grew by leaps and bounds - he soon received the rank of major general, a new position - at the Military Diplomatic Academy, while remaining in the elite personnel reserve of the GRU.

The Americans also appreciated him. For example, an experimental model of a pulsed radio transmitter was transferred to Bourbon - this device, slightly larger than a matchbox, made it possible to transmit a packet of encrypted information to a special receiver in a second. Having received this device, Polyakov began to simply ride the trolleybus past the American embassy, ​​"firing" information at the right moment. He was not afraid of the direction finding of the KGB radio technical service - how to guess where the agent was "shooting" from?

Camera "MINOX". Wikipedia.org Creative Commons

Polyakov became so confident in his safety that he even began to use confiscated spy equipment from the GRU warehouses. For example, when the Minox camera sent from the USA suddenly broke down, Polyakov simply took exactly the same camera from the GRU archives and calmly photographed the documents. But soon the American owners showed that such work was not enough for them.

Under the hood

1979 began with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, when power in the country passed to Islamic fanatics - the Revolutionary Council, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran were terminated, the countries were actively preparing for war. And US President Jimmy Carter ordered the CIA to use all Soviet agents to find out details about the relationship between Moscow and Tehran.

Demonstration in Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Wikipedia.org Creative Commons

But just at that moment Polyakov was preparing for a new foreign business trip to India. He considered an emergency contact with the CIA resident a suicidal risk. Therefore, he ignored the signal of the meeting.

It was then that the Americans used the whip, wanting to teach a lesson who is really the boss here. In one of the American magazines was published a chapter from the upcoming book by John Barron "KGB", dedicated to Karl Tuomi. Throughout the text, Polyakov's name was never mentioned, although everyone knew that it was Polyakov who was Tuomi's immediate superior. But the magazine publication was illustrated with a photograph that could not have appeared in the United States - a photograph from Tuomi's personal file in military uniform... That is, the authors seemed to be hinting that someone in Moscow had stolen this photo from a secret file and handed it over to the Americans.

But the Americans overdid it. The publication was noticed in Moscow as well. Soon, after going through all the candidates, the Chekists came to the conclusion that General Polyakov was the only one who could inform the Americans about Tuomi's agent.

But Polyakov politely stopped her - apparently, he was not sure that the Americans, who had actually betrayed him, really wanted to save his life, and not organize a high-profile murder, which, of course, would be blamed on the KGB.

Thank you, but I will never go to the United States, ”Polyakov sighed. - I was born in Russia and I want to die in Russia, even if it is an unmarked mass grave.

However, at that time Polyakov got off with only a slight fright - Andropov forbade him to touch him without clear evidence of guilt.

If you now start jailing generals without proof, then who will work ?! - he said.

In addition, Andropov was already preparing for the upcoming battle for the throne and did not want to quarrel with the army clans ahead of time.

As a result, Polyakov was simply dismissed, having read the order to dismiss from service. Say, a new, younger candidate for the position of the resident has been prepared.

Arrest and execution

The Iranian crisis ended badly for Jimmy Carter, and soon the new US President Ronald Reagan ordered the intelligence officers to forget about Iran and return to the fight against "world communism" represented by the USSR. And Polyakov was "woken up" again, although he, being a pensioner, could no longer hand over secret documents. But the White House appreciated his political reviews.

It is difficult to say how many more Polyakov would have worked for the Americans, but in the spring of 1985, Aldrich Hazen Ames, the former head of the Soviet department of the CIA's foreign counterintelligence department, was recruited by one of the leaders of the Soviet station in Washington. Ames, who gave out huge sums to reward Soviet defector agents, also wanted to swim in money, to own a luxurious house and a Jaguar sports car. And then he decided to get money in Moscow, offering the KGB to buy a list of 25 names of "sleeping" agents in the leadership of the Soviet special services. And the first number on the list was General Polyakov.

Polyakov was arrested on July 7, 1986, the day after the celebration of his 65th birthday. When Polyakov was celebrating his anniversary in a restaurant, an unofficial search was carried out at his house - in a dozen caches, operatives found American spy equipment, microfilms, and CIA service instructions.

After the banquet was over, they tied him up - and so carefully that for several years the Americans simply did not know what had happened to him. Agent Bourbon seemed to dissolve into the Moscow hustle and bustle, cutting off all contacts behind him.

Only after negotiations with Gorbachev did it become known that the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in February 1987 sentenced Polyakov to death by firing squad. On March 15, 1987, the sentence was carried out.

The burial place of his body is unknown.

And fourthly. There were many traitors in the ranks of the GRU. So it’s not possible to talk about everyone, and there’s no need to. Therefore, this essay will focus on P. Popov, D. Polyakov, N. Chernov, A. Filatov, V. Rezun, G. Smetanin, V. Baranov, A. Volkov, G. Sporyshev and V. Tkachenko. As for the "traitor of the century" O. Penkovsky, so many books and articles have been written about him that it will be a waste of time to talk about him once again.

Pyotr Semenovich Popov was born in Kalinin, in a peasant family, fought in the Great Patriotic War, during which he became an officer. At the end of the war, he served as a messenger under Colonel-General I. Serov and, under his patronage, was sent to the GRU. Short, nervous, thin, without any imagination, he kept himself apart, was very secretive and did not get along well with other officers. However, as his colleagues and bosses later said, there were no complaints about Popov's service. He was executive, disciplined, had good characteristics and was actively involved in all social activities.

In 1951, Popov was sent to Austria as an intern at the legal Vienna residency of the GRU. His task was to recruit agents and work against Yugoslavia. Here, in Vienna in 1952, Popov began an affair with a young Austrian woman, Emilia Kochanek. They met in restaurants, rented hotel rooms for several hours, trying to keep their relationship secret from Popov's colleagues. Of course, this way of life demanded significant expenses from Popov. And if you take into account the fact that he had a wife and two children in Kalinin, then financial problems soon became the main ones for him.

On January 1, 1953, Popov approached the US vice-consul in Vienna and asked to arrange for him access to the CIA's American office in Austria. At the same time, Popov handed him a note in which he offered his services and indicated the meeting place.

Acquiring an agent locally within the walls of the GRU was a big deal at the CIA. To provide support for operations with Popov, a special unit was created within the Soviet department, called SR-9. The head of Popov on the spot was George Kaisvalter, who was assisted (with a break from the end of 1953 to 1955) Richard Kovacs. Popov's operational pseudonym was "Grelspice", and Kaisvalter performed under the name Grossman.

At the first meeting with the CIA officers, Popov said that he needed money to settle business with one woman, which was met with understanding. Kaisvalter and Popov developed a rather relaxed relationship. Kaisvalter's strength in dealing with the new agent was his ability to win Popov's trust through long hours of drinking and talking together. He was not at all disgusted with Popov's peasant simplicity, and their drinks after successful operations were well known to the CIA officers who knew about Popov. Many of them had the impression that Popov considered Kaisvalter to be his friend. At that time, there was a joke in the CIA that in one Soviet collective farm the management had its own cow, since with the money given by Kaisvalter, Popov bought a heifer for his brother, a collective farmer.

Having begun to cooperate with the CIA, Popov passed on to the Americans information about the personnel of the GRU in Austria and the methods of its work. He provided the CIA with important details about Soviet policy in Austria, and later on policy in East Germany. According to some, most likely very exaggerated data, Popov in the first two years of cooperation with the CIA gave Kaisvalter the names and codes of about 400 Soviet agents in the West. Providing for the possibility of recalling Popov to the headquarters of the GRU, the CIA launched an operation to select hiding places in Moscow. This task was assigned to Edward Smith, the first CIA man in Moscow, sent there in 1953. However, Popov, having been in Moscow on vacation and having checked the hiding places chosen by Smith, found them useless. According to Kaisvalter, he said, “They're lousy. Are you trying to destroy me? " Popov complained that the caches were inaccessible and that using them would be tantamount to suicide.

In 1954 Popov was recalled to Moscow. Perhaps this was caused by his acquaintance with PS Deryabin, a KGB officer in Vienna, who fled to the United States in February 1954. But neither the GRU nor the KGB had any suspicions about Popov's loyalty, and in the summer of 1955 he was sent to Schwerin in the north of the GDR. The transfer to Schwerin cut off Popov's connection with his operator Kaisvalter, and he sent a letter through a previously agreed channel.

In response, Popov soon received a letter placed under the door of his apartment, which said:

“Hello dear Max!

Greetings from Grossman. I am waiting for you in Berlin. There is every opportunity here to have a good time as in Vienna. I am sending a letter with my man, with whom you must meet tomorrow at 8 pm near the photo display, near the House of Culture. Gorky in Schwerin, and give him a letter. "

Contact with Popov in Schwerin was established with the help of a German woman named Inga, and was later maintained by CIA agent Radtke. During the investigation, 75-year-old Radtke said that their meetings always took place after four weeks. At each of them, Radtke received from Popov a package for Kaisvalter and gave Popov a letter and an envelope with money.

While Popov was in Schwerin, despite all his efforts, he could not personally meet with Kaisvalter. This opportunity was given to him in 1957, when he was transferred to work in East Berlin. Their meetings took place in West Berlin in a safe house, and Kaisvalter changed the last name under which he worked from Grossman to Scharnhorst.

In Berlin, - said Popov at the investigation, - Grossman took up me more thoroughly. He was literally interested in my every step. For example, after returning from a vacation that I spent in the Soviet Union, Grossman demanded the most detailed report on how I spent the vacation, where I was, with whom I met, and demanded that I talk about the smallest details. At each meeting, he came with a pre-prepared questionnaire and during the conversation gave me specific tasks to collect information.

The interruption of communication with Popov after his recall from Vienna alarmed the CIA. To hedge against such surprises, the conditions for contacts with Popov were worked out in case he was recalled from Berlin. He was equipped with secret writing, encryption and decryption notebooks, a radio plan, detailed instructions for using ciphers and addresses by which he could inform the CIA from the USSR about his position. To receive radio signals, Popov was given a receiver, and at one of the meetings with Kaisvalter he listened to a tape recording of the signals that he was supposed to receive while in the USSR. The instructions given to Popov said:

“Plan in case you stay in Moscow. Write in secret writing to the address: V. Krabbe Family, Shildov, st. Franz Schmidt, 28. Sender Gerhard Schmidt. In this letter, provide all the information about your position and future plans, as well as when you are ready to receive our radio broadcasts. The radio plane is as follows. Broadcasts will be on the first and third Saturday of each month. The transmission time and wave are shown in the table ... ".

In addition, in the spring of 1958, Kaisvalter introduced Popov to his possible contact in Moscow - attaché of the US Embassy in the USSR and CIA officer Russell August Langelli, specially summoned to Berlin on this occasion, and given the pseudonym "Daniel". At the same time, Kaisvalter assured Popov that he could always leave for the United States, where he would be provided with everything he needed.

In mid-1958, Popov was instructed to send an illegal immigrant to New York - a young woman named Tayrova. Tayrova left for the United States using an American passport belonging to a hairdresser from Chicago, which she "lost" during a trip to her homeland in Poland. Popov warned the CIA about Tyrovoy, and the Office, in turn, notified the FBI. But the FBI made the mistake of putting too much surveillance on Tyrova. She, having discovered the surveillance, independently decided to return to Moscow. While analyzing the reasons for the failure, Popov blamed Tayrova for everything, his explanations were accepted and he continued to work in the central office of the GRU.

On the evening of December 23, 1958, Popov phoned the apartment of the US Embassy attaché R. Langelli and with a prearranged signal invited him to a personal meeting, which was to take place on Sunday, December 27, in the men's dressing room of the Central Children's Theater at the end of the first intermission of the morning performance. But Langelli, who came to the theater with his wife and children, waited in vain for Popov at the appointed place - he did not come. The CIA were worried about Popov's failure to communicate, and made a mistake that cost him his life. According to Kisewalter, the CIA attracted George Payne Winters Jr., who worked in Moscow as a representative of the State Department, misunderstood the instruction to send a letter to Popov, and sent it by mail to his home address in Kalinin. But, as defectors Nosenko and Cherepanov later showed, KGB officers regularly sprayed special Chemical substance, which helped to trace Winters' path to the mailbox and seize the letter addressed to Popov.

In light of the above, we can confidently say that M. Hyde in his book "George Blake the Super Spy", and after him, and K. Andrew, are mistaken when attributing the exposure of Popov to J. Blake, an SIS officer recruited by the KGB in Korea in the fall of 1951. M. Hyde writes that after the transfer from Vienna, Popov wrote a letter to Kaisvalter, explaining his difficulties, and handed it to one of the members of the British military mission in East Germany. He passed the message to the SIS (Olympic Stadium, West Berlin), where it lay on Blake's table, along with instructions to send it to Vienna for the CIA. Blake did so, but only after reading the letter and transmitting its contents to Moscow. Upon receiving the message, the KGB took Popov under surveillance, and when he arrived in Moscow, they arrested him. Blake, in his book No Other Choice, rightly refutes this claim, saying that the letter given by Popov to an officer of the British military mission could not reach him, since he was not responsible for relations with this mission and the CIA. And then, if the KGB had known back in 1955 that Popov was an American agent (this would have happened if Blake had informed about the letter), then he would not have been kept in the GRU, and even more so, they would not have believed his explanations about Tayrova's failure.

After tracing Winters' path and learning that he had sent a letter to a GRU officer, KGB counterintelligence took Popov under surveillance. During the observation, it was established that Popov twice - on January 4 and 21, 1959 - met with the attaché of the US Embassy in Moscow Langelli, and, as it turned out later, during the second meeting he received 15,000 rubles. It was decided to arrest Popov, and on February 18, 1959, he was detained at the suburban ticket offices of the Leningradsky railway station, when he was preparing for the next meeting with Langelli.

During the search at Popov's apartment, secret writing means, a code, instructions stored in hiding places equipped in a hunting knife, a spinning reel and a shaving brush were seized. In addition, a cryptographic report prepared for transmission to Langelli was discovered:

“I answer to your number one. I accept your instructions for guidance in my work. I will call you for the next meeting by phone before leaving Moscow. If it is impossible to meet before leaving, I will write to Crabbe. I have a carbon copy and pills, I need instructions on the radio. It is desirable to have an address in Moscow, but very reliable. After my departure, I will try to go to meetings in Moscow two or three times a year.

… I am sincerely grateful to you for taking care of my safety, it is vitally important for me. Thank you very much for the money. Now I have the opportunity to meet with numerous acquaintances in order to obtain the necessary information. Thanks again. "

After the interrogation of Popov, it was decided to continue his contacts with Langelli under the control of the KGB. According to Kaisvalter, Popov managed to warn Langelli that he was under KGB surveillance. He deliberately cut himself and put a note in the form of a strip of paper under the bandage. In the toilet of the Agavi restaurant, he took off his bandage and handed over a note in which he said that he was being tortured and that he was under surveillance, as well as how he was seized. But this seems unlikely. If Langelli had been warned of Popov's failure, he would not have met him again. However, on September 16, 1959, he contacted Popov, which happened on the bus. Popov imperceptibly pointed to the tape recorder so that Langelli would know about the observation, but it was too late. Langelli was detained, but due to diplomatic immunity he was released, declared persona non grata and expelled from Moscow.

In January 1960, Popov appeared before the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. The verdict of January 7, 1960 read:

“Popov Petr Semenovich was found guilty of treason and on the basis of Art. 1 of the Law on Criminal Responsibility to subject to execution, with confiscation of property. "

In conclusion, it seems interesting to note that Popov was the first traitor from the GRU, about whom the West wrote that, as a warning to other employees, he was burned alive in the furnace of the crematorium.

Dmitry Fedorovich Polyakov was born in 1921 in the family of an accountant in Ukraine. In September 1939, after graduating from school, he entered the Kiev Artillery School, and as a platoon commander entered the Great Patriotic War. He fought on the Western and Karelian fronts, was a battery commander, and in 1943 he was appointed an artillery reconnaissance officer. During the war years, he was awarded the Orders of the Patriotic War and the Red Star, as well as many medals. After the end of the war, Polyakov graduated from the intelligence department of the Academy. Frunze, courses of the General Staff and was sent to work in the GRU.

In the early 1950s, Polyakov was sent to New York under the guise of an employee of the Soviet UN mission. His task was to provide agents for the GRU illegal immigrants. Polyakov's work on the first business trip was recognized as successful, and in the late 1950s he was again sent to the United States as a deputy resident under the guise of a Soviet officer of the UN military staff committee.

In November 1961, Polyakov, on his own initiative, contacted the FBI counterintelligence agents, who gave him the pseudonym "Tophat". The Americans believed that the reason for his betrayal was his disillusionment with the Soviet regime. CIA officer Paul Dillon, who was Polyakov's operator in Delhi, says the following about this:

“I think the motivation for his actions is rooted in the Second World War. He compared the horrors, the bloody massacre, the cause for which he fought, with duplicity and corruption, which, in his opinion, were growing in Moscow. "

Polyakov's former colleagues do not completely deny this version either, although they insist that his "ideological and political degeneration" took place "against the backdrop of painful pride." For example, the former first deputy chief of the GRU, Colonel-General A.G. Pavlov says:

"At the trial, Polyakov declared his political degeneration, his hostile attitude towards our country, and he did not hide his personal gain."

During the investigation, Polyakov himself said the following about himself:

“At the heart of my betrayal lay both my desire to openly express my views and doubts somewhere, and the qualities of my character - a constant desire to work beyond risk. And the more the danger became, the more interesting my life became ... I was used to walking on the edge of a knife and could not imagine another life for myself. "

However, it would be wrong to say that this decision was easy for him. After his arrest, he said the following words:

“Almost from the very beginning of my cooperation with the CIA, I understood that I had made a fatal mistake, a grave crime. The endless torments of the soul, which continued throughout this period, so exhausted me that I myself was more than once ready to confess. And only the thought of what would happen to my wife, children, grandchildren, and the fear of shame, stopped me, and I continued the criminal relationship, or silence, in order to somehow postpone the hour of reckoning. "

All of his operators noted that he received a little money, no more than $ 3,000 a year, which was given to him mainly in the form of Black & Decker electromechanical tools, a pair of overalls, fishing tackle and guns. (The fact is that in free time Polyakov loved to do carpentry, and also collected expensive guns.) In addition, unlike most other Soviet officers recruited by the FBI and CIA, Polyakov did not smoke, almost did not drink, and did not cheat on his wife. So the amount he received from the Americans for 24 years of work can be called small: according to a rough estimate of the investigation, it amounted to about 94 thousand rubles at the 1985 exchange rate.

One way or another, but since November 1961, Polyakov began to transmit to the Americans information about the activities and agents of the GRU in the United States and other Western countries. And he began to do this already from the second meeting with the FBI agents. Here it is worth reiterating the protocol of his interrogation:

“This meeting was again mainly devoted to the question of why I decided to cooperate with them, and also whether I was a set-up. In order to recheck me, and at the same time to consolidate my relationship with them, Michael concluded by suggesting that I name the Soviet military intelligence officers in New York. I did not hesitate to list all the people I know who worked under the guise of the USSR Mission. "

It is believed that at the very beginning of his work for the FBI, Polyakov betrayed D. Dunlap, a staff sergeant at the NSA, and F. Bossard, an employee of the British Air Department. However, this is unlikely. Dunlap, recruited in 1960, was led by a cameraman from the GRU's Washington residency, and his connection to Soviet intelligence was uncovered by accident when his garage was searched after he committed suicide in July 1963. As for Bossard, in fact, the FBI intelligence department misled MI5 by attributing the findings to Tophat. This was done in order to protect another source from among the GRU officers in New York, who had the pseudonym "Niknek".

But it was Polyakov who betrayed the illegal GRU in the United States, Captain Maria Dobrova. Dobrova, who fought in Spain as a translator, after returning to Moscow began working in the GRU, and after appropriate training was sent to the United States. In America, she operated under the cover of the owner of a beauty salon, which was attended by representatives of high-ranking military, political and business circles. After Polyakov betrayed Dobrov, the FBI tried to convert her, but she chose to commit suicide.

In total, during his work for the Americans, Polyakov gave them 19 illegal Soviet intelligence agents, more than 150 agents from among foreign citizens, revealed that about 1,500 active intelligence officers belonged to the GRU and KGB.

In the summer of 1962, Polyakov returned to Moscow, supplied with instructions, conditions of communication, a schedule for conducting secret operations (one per quarter). Places for hiding places were selected mainly along the route of his route to service and back: in the areas of Bolshaya Ordynka and Bolshaya Polyanka, near the Dobryninskaya metro station and at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya trolleybus stop. Most likely, it was this circumstance, as well as the lack of personal contacts with CIA representatives in Moscow, that helped Polyakov avoid failure after another CIA agent, Colonel O. Penkovsky, was arrested in October 1962.

In 1966, Polyakov was sent to Burma as the head of the radio interception center in Rangoon. Upon his return to the USSR, he was appointed head of the Chinese department, and in 1970 he was sent to India as a military attaché and resident of the GRU. At this time, the volume of information transmitted by Polyakov to the CIA increased sharply. He gave out the names of four American officers recruited by the GRU, handed over photographic films of documents testifying to the deep divergence of positions between China and the USSR. Thanks to these documents, CIA analysts concluded that the Soviet-Chinese disagreements were of a long-term nature. These findings were used by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and helped him and Nixon mend relations with China in 1972.

In light of this, it seems at least naive to assert L.V. Shebarshin, then the deputy resident of the KGB in Delhi, that during Polyakov's work in India the KGB had certain suspicions about him. “Polyakov demonstrated his complete sympathy for the Chekists,” Shebarshin writes. - but it was known from friends from among the military that he did not miss the slightest opportunity to turn them against the KGB and secretly pursued those who were friends with our comrades. No spy can avoid miscalculations. But, as often happens in our case, it took more years for the suspicions to be confirmed. " Most likely, behind this statement is a desire to show off their own perspicacity and an unwillingness to recognize the unsatisfactory work of the KGB military counterintelligence in this case.

It should be said that Polyakov took very seriously the idea that the GRU leadership formed an opinion about him as a thoughtful, promising employee. To do this, the CIA regularly provided him with some classified materials, and also framed two Americans, whom he introduced as recruited by him. For the same purpose, Polyakov strove to ensure that his two sons received higher education and had a prestigious profession. He gave his employees in the GRU many trinkets, such as lighters and ballpoint pens, making up the impression of himself as a pleasant person and a good comrade. One of Polyakov's patrons was the head of the GRU personnel department, Lieutenant General Sergei Izotov, who had worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU for 15 years before this appointment. In the case of Polyakov, there are expensive gifts made by him to Izotov. And for the rank of general, Polyakov presented Izotov with a silver service, bought specifically for this purpose by the CIA.

Polyakov received the rank of Major General in 1974. This provided him with access to materials that went beyond his direct responsibilities. For example, to the list of military technologies that were purchased or produced by intelligence in the West. Richard Pearl, US Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, confessed that he was breathless when he learned of the existence of 5,000 Soviet programs that used Western technology to build military capabilities. The list provided by Polyakov helped Pearl persuade President Reagan to tighten control over the sale of military technology.

Polyakov's work as a CIA agent was distinguished by audacity and fantastic luck. In Moscow, he stole from a GRU warehouse a special self-illuminating film "Mikrat 93 Shield", which he used to photograph secret documents. To transmit information, he stole fake hollow stones, which he left in certain places where they were picked up by CIA operatives. To give a signal about laying a cache, Polyakov, passing on public transport past the US Embassy in Moscow, activated a miniature transmitter hidden in his pocket. While abroad, Polyakov preferred to pass information from hand to hand. After 1970, the CIA, in an effort to fully ensure the safety of Polyakov, provided him with a specially designed portable pulse transmitter, with which it was possible to print information, then encrypt and transmit to a receiving device at the American embassy in 2.6 seconds. Polyakov conducted such broadcasts from different places in Moscow: from the Inguri cafe, the Vanda store, Krasnopresnenskie baths, the Central Tourist House, from Tchaikovsky Street, etc.

By the late 1970s, CIA officials, they said, already treated Polyakov more like a teacher than an agent and informant. They left to him the choice of the place and time of meetings and the laying of caches. However, they had no other choice, since Polyakov did not forgive them for mistakes. So, in 1972, the Americans, without Polyakov's consent, invited him to an official reception at the US Embassy in Moscow, which actually put him at risk of failure. The GRU leadership gave permission, and Polyakov had to go there. During the reception, he was secretly given a note, which he destroyed without reading. Moreover, for a long time he cut off all contacts with the CIA, until he was convinced that he had not come under suspicion of the KGB counterintelligence.

In the late 70s, Polyakov was again sent to India as a resident of the GRU. He remained there until June 1980, when he was recalled to Moscow. However, this early return was not associated with possible suspicions against him. Just another medical commission forbade him to work in countries with hot climates. However, the Americans got worried and offered Polyakov to leave for the United States. But he refused. According to a CIA officer in Delhi, in response to the desire to come to America in case of danger, where he is expected with open arms, Polyakov replied: “Don't wait for me. I will never come to the USA. I'm not doing this for you. I do this for my country. I was born Russian and I will die Russian. " And when asked what awaits him in case of exposure, he replied: "Mass grave."

Polyakov looked into the water. His fantastic luck and career as a CIA agent came to an end in 1985, when Aldrich Ames, a career CIA officer, came to the KGB station in Washington and offered his services. Among the KGB and GRU officers named by Ames who worked for the CIA was Polyakov.

Polyakov was arrested at the end of 1986. During the search carried out at his apartment, at his dacha and at his mother's house, material evidence of his espionage activities was found. Among them: sheets of a secret copy, made by a typographic method and embedded in envelopes for gramophone records, cipher notes camouflaged in the cover of a travel bag, two attachments for a small-sized Tessina camera for vertical and horizontal shooting, several reels of Kodak film designed for special development , a ballpoint pen, the clamping head of which was intended for applying a cryptographic text, as well as negatives with the conditions of communication with CIA officers in Moscow and instructions on contacts with them abroad.

The investigation into the Polyakov case was conducted by the KGB investigator, Colonel A. Dukhanin, who later became famous for the so-called "Kremlin case" of Gdlyan and Ivanov. Polyakov's wife and adult sons were seen as witnesses, since they did not know or suspect about his espionage activities. After the end of the investigation, many generals and officers of the GRU, whose negligence and talkativeness Polyakov often took advantage of, were brought to administrative responsibility by the command and dismissed from retirement or to the reserve. In early 1988, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced DF Polyakov for treason and espionage to execution with confiscation of property. The verdict was carried out on March 15, 1988. And it was only in 1990 that Pravda reported officially about the execution of DF Polyakov.

In 1994, after the arrest and exposure of Ames, the CIA recognized Polyakov's cooperation with him. It was stated that he was the most important of Ames' victims, far superior in importance to all others. The information he gave and photocopies of classified documents make up 25 boxes in the CIA dossier. Many experts familiar with the Polyakov case say that he made a much more important contribution than the more famous GRU defector Colonel O. Penkovsky. This point of view is shared by another traitor from the GRU, Nikolai Chernov, who said: “Polyakov is a star. And Penkovsky is so-so ... ". According to CIA Director James Woolsey, of all Soviet agents recruited during the Cold War, Polyakov "was a real diamond."

Indeed, in addition to the list of interests of scientific and technical intelligence, data on China, Polyakov reported information about new weapons Soviet army in particular about anti-tank missiles, which helped the Americans to destroy these weapons when they were used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. He also handed over to the West more than 100 issues of the secret periodical "Military Thought", published by the General Staff. As noted by Robert Gates, director of the CIA under President Bush, the documents stolen by Polyakov made it possible to learn about the use of armed forces in the event of war, and helped to make a firm conclusion that the Soviet military leaders did not consider it possible to win a nuclear war and sought to avoid it. According to Gates, familiarization with these documents prevented the US leadership from making erroneous conclusions, which may have helped to avoid a "hot" war.

Of course, Gates knows better what helped to avoid a "hot" war and what Polyakov's merit is in this. But even if it is as great as the Americans are trying to assure all of it, this does not in the least justify his betrayal.

Nikolai Dmitrievich Chernov, born in 1917, served in the operational and technical department of the GRU. In the early 60s, he was sent to the United States as an operative technician for the New York residency. In New York, Chernov led a rather unusual way of life for a Soviet employee in foreign countries. He often visited restaurants, nightclubs, cabarets. And all this required corresponding cash costs. Therefore, it is not surprising that one day, in 1963, together with KGB Major D. Kashin (surname changed), he went to a wholesale base of an American construction company located in New York to buy materials for renovating premises in the embassy, ​​persuading the owner of the base issue documents without reflecting a trade discount for a bulk purchase. Thus, Chernov and Kashin received $ 200 in cash, which they divided among themselves.

However, when Chernov arrived at the base the next day for building materials, two FBI agents met him in the owner's office. They showed Chernov photocopies of payment documents, from which it was clear that he embezzled $ 200, as well as photographs in which he was captured in entertainment establishments in New York. Stating that they knew that Chernov was an employee of the GRU, FBI agents suggested that he begin cooperation. Blackmail had an effect on Chernov - in those years, for visiting entertainment establishments, they could easily be sent to Moscow and made restricted to travel abroad, and this is not to mention the embezzlement of state money.

Prior to his departure to Moscow, Chernov, who was given the pseudonym Niknek by the FBI, held a number of meetings with the Americans and gave them the secret writing tablets used by the GRU, and a number of photocopies of materials that the GRU operational officers brought him to the laboratory for processing. At the same time, the Americans demanded from him photocopies of those materials on which there were notes: NATO, military and top secret. Just before Chernov's departure to the USSR at the end of 1963, FBI officers agreed with him about contacts during his next trip to the West and donated 10,000 rubles, Minox and Tessina cameras, and an English-Russian dictionary with secret writing. As for the money received by Chernov from the Americans, he told the following during the investigation:

“I figured, next time I will come abroad in five years. I need ten rubles for singing every day. A total of about twenty thousand. I asked for that much. "

The materials transferred by Chernov were very valuable for the American counterintelligence. The fact is that, while reshooting the documents received by the GRU residency from agents, Chernov gave the FBI officers their names, photographs of the title pages and document numbers. This helped the FBI identify the agent. For example, Chernov was involved in the processing of the secret "Album of guided missiles of the US Navy" received from the GRU agent "Drona", and gave copies of these materials to the FBI. As a result, in September 1963, "Drone" was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Also on a tip received from Chernov, in 1965 in England the GRU agent "Bard" was arrested. It turned out to be Frank Bossard, an employee of the British Air Department, recruited in 1961 by I.P. Glazkov. Accused of transferring information about American missile guidance systems to the USSR, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison. The importance of Niknack to the FBI is evidenced by the fact that the FBI intelligence department misled MI5 by attributing information about Bossard, obtained by Chernov, to another source - Tophat (D. Polyakov).

In Moscow, Chernov until 1968 worked in the operational-technical department of the GRU in the photo laboratory of the 1st special department, and then transferred to the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU as a junior assistant. During his work in the GRU photo laboratory, Chernov processed materials received by the Center and sent to the residency, which contained information about the agents. These materials, with a total volume of over 3,000 personnel, he handed over to the FBI officers in 1972 during a trip abroad through the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With his diplomatic passport in hand, Chernov easily took the exposed films abroad in two packages.

This time, the FBI's catch was even more significant. According to an excerpt from Chernov's court case, Brigadier General Jean-Louis Jeanmair, commander of the Swiss air defense forces, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage for the USSR through his fault in 1977. Together with his wife, he was recruited by the GRU in 1962 and worked actively until his arrest. "Moore" and "Mary" were identified on the basis of data received by the Swiss counterintelligence from one of the foreign intelligence services. Moreover, as noted in the press, the information came from a Soviet source.

In the UK, with the help of materials received from Chernov, he was arrested in 1972 Ensign BBC David Bingham. He was recruited by GRU officer L.T. Kuzmin in early 1970 and for two years handed him secret documents to which he had access to naval base in Portsmouth. After his arrest, he was charged with espionage and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

The greatest damage from Chernov's betrayal was suffered by the GRU spy network in France. In 1973, the FBI turned over information about France from Chernov to the Territorial Protection Agency. As a result of the search activities carried out by the French counterintelligence, a significant part of the GRU spy network was revealed. On March 15, 1977, 54-year-old Serge Fabiev, a resident of an agent group recruited in 1963 by S. Kudryavtsev, was arrested. Together with him, Giovanni Ferrero, Roger Laval and Marc Lefebvre were detained on March 17, 20 and 21. The trial, held in January 1978, sentenced Fabiev to 20 years in prison, Lefebvre to 15 years, Ferrero to 8 years. Laval, who had blackouts during the investigation, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of dementia and did not appear in court. And in October 1977, another GRU agent was arrested by the Territorial Protection Office - Georges Bofis, a longtime member of the FKP who had worked for the GRU since 1963. Given his military background and participation in the Resistance movement, the court sentenced him to 8 years in prison.

After 1972, Chernov, he said, ended his relationship with the Americans. But this is not surprising, since at this time he began to drink heavily and was expelled for drunkenness and for suspicion of losing a secret directory, which contained information about all illegal communist leaders, from the CPSU Central Committee. After that Chernov washed down "in a black way", tried to commit suicide, but survived. In 1980, having quarreled with his wife and children, he left for Sochi, where he managed to pull himself together. He left for the Moscow region and, settling in the village, began to study agriculture.

But after the arrest in 1986 of General Polyakov, Chernov became interested in the KGB Investigation Department. The fact is that during one of the interrogations in 1987, Polyakov said:

"During a meeting in 1980 in Delhi with an American intelligence officer, I learned that Chernov was passing on cryptography and other materials to the Americans, to which he had access by service."

However, it may well be that information about Chernov's betrayal was received from Ames, recruited in the spring of 1985.

One way or another, from that time on, the military counterintelligence began to check Chernov, but no evidence of his contacts with the CIA was found. Therefore, none of the KGB leadership found the courage to issue a warrant for his arrest. And only in 1990, the deputy head of the KGB Investigative Directorate, V.S.Vasilenko, insisted before the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office to detain Chernov.

At the very first interrogation, Chernov began to testify. Here, most likely, the fact that he decided that the Americans had betrayed him played a role. When a few months later Chernov told everything, the investigator V.V. Renev, who was in charge of his case, asked him to present material evidence of what he had done. Here is what he himself recalls about this:

“I noticed: give material evidence. This will be credited to you at the trial.

It worked. Chernov remembered that he had a friend, the captain of the 1st rank, a translator, to whom he presented an English-Russian dictionary. The one that the Americans gave him. In this dictionary, on a certain page, there is a sheet that is impregnated with a cryptographic substance and is a secret copy of the copy. Friend's address is such and such.

I immediately phoned the caperang. We met. I explained all the circumstances and looked forward to hearing. After all, tell him that he burned the dictionary - and the conversation is over. But the officer answered honestly, yes, he did. Whether at home or not I have this dictionary, I don’t remember, I need to look.

The apartment has a huge bookcase with books. He took out one dictionary - it does not fit the one described by Chernov. The second is exactly it. With the inscription “Chernov's gift. 1977 "

On the title page dictionary - two lines. If you count the letters in them, you will determine on which sheet the secret copy is. When the experts checked it, they were surprised: they met with such a substance for the first time. And although thirty years have passed, the carbon copy was completely usable. "

According to Chernov himself, during the investigation, the KGB did not have material evidence of his guilt, but in fact the following happened:

“They told me: 'Many years have passed. Share your secrets about the activities of the American intelligence services. They say that the information will be used to train young employees. And for this we will not bring you to court. " So I invented, fantasized, that I once read in books. They were delighted, and blamed on me all the failures that have been in the GRU over the past 30 years ... There was nothing of value in the materials I gave. The documents were filmed in a regular library. And in general, if I wanted to, I would have ruined the GRU. But I didn't. "

On August 18, 1991, Chernov's case was transferred to the court. At the hearing of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Chernov pleaded guilty and gave detailed testimony about the circumstances of his recruitment by the FBI officers, the nature of the information given to him, methods of collecting, storing and transferring intelligence materials. About the motives of betrayal, he said this: he committed the crime out of selfish motives, he did not feel hostility to the state system. On September 11, 1991, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court sentenced N.D. Chernov to imprisonment for a term of 8 years. But 5 months later, by the decree of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, Chernov, as well as nine other people convicted at different times under Article 64 of the Criminal Code - "Treason to the Motherland", were pardoned. As a result, Chernov actually escaped punishment and calmly returned home to Moscow.

Anatoly Filatov was born in 1940 in Saratov region... His parents embroidered peasants, his father distinguished himself in the Great Patriotic War. After graduating from school, Filatov entered an agricultural technical school, and then worked for a short time as a livestock technician at a state farm. After being drafted into the army, he began to quickly advance in service, graduated from the Military-Diplomatic Academy and was sent to serve in the GRU. Having proved himself well on his first business trip to Laos, Filatov, who by that time had received the rank of major, was sent to Algeria in June 1973. In Algeria, he worked under the “roof” of an embassy interpreter, whose duties included organizing protocol events, translating official correspondence, processing the local press, and purchasing books for the embassy. This cover allowed him to actively move around the country without arousing undue suspicion.

In February 1974, Filatov came into contact with CIA officers. Later, during the investigation, Filatov will show that he has fallen into a "honey trap". Due to the breakdown of the car, he was forced to move on foot. This is how Filatov himself told about it at the trial:

“In late January - early February 1974, I was in the city of Algeria, where I was looking in bookstores for literature about the country on ethnography, life and customs of the Algerians. When I was returning from the store, a car stopped on one of the streets of the city near me. The door opened slightly, and I saw an unfamiliar young woman who offered to take me to my place of residence. I agreed. We got to talking, and she invited me to her home, saying that she had literature of interest to me. We drove up to her house, went into the apartment. I have selected two books that interest me. We drank a cup of coffee and I left.

Three days later I went to the grocery store and again met the same young woman at the wheel of the car. We greeted each other, and she offered to stop by her place for another book. The woman's name was Nadi. She is 22-23 years old. She spoke fluent French, but with a slight accent.

Entering the apartment, Nadia put coffee and a bottle of brandy on the table. She turned on the music. We started drinking and talking. The conversation ended in bed. "

Filatov was photographed with Nadia, and these photos were shown to him a few days later by a CIA officer who introduced himself as Edward Caine, the first secretary of the special American mission of the US Interests Service at the Swiss Embassy in Algeria. According to Filatov, fearing a recall from a business trip, he succumbed to blackmail and agreed to meet with Kane. The fact that the Americans decided to blackmail Filatov with the help of a woman is not surprising, since he was not distinguished in his relations with them in Laos. Therefore, the version of the beginning of Filatov's contacts with the CIA, which was put forward by D. Barron, the author of the book "KGB Today", looks completely implausible and absolutely unsubstantiated. He writes that Filatov himself offered his services to the CIA, perfectly aware of the risks he was taking, but not seeing how the CPSU could be harmed in another way.

In Algeria, Filatov, who received the pseudonym "Etienne", held more than 20 meetings with Kane. He gave him information on the work of the embassy, ​​on the GRU operations in Algeria and France, data on military equipment and the participation of the USSR in the preparation and training of representatives of a number of third world countries in the methods of guerrilla warfare and sabotage activities. In April 1976, when it became known that Filatov was to return to Moscow, another CIA officer became his operator, with whom he worked out safe methods of communication on the territory of the USSR. To transmit messages to Filatov, encrypted radio broadcasts were carried out twice a week from Frankfurt to German... It was stipulated that combat transmissions would start with an odd number, and training ones - with an even number. For camouflage purposes, radio broadcasts began to be broadcast in advance, before Filatov returned to Moscow. For feedback, it was supposed to use cover letters, allegedly written by foreigners. As a last resort, a personal meeting with a CIA operative in Moscow near the Dynamo stadium was envisaged.

In July 1976, before leaving for Moscow, Filatov was given six cover letters, a carbon copy for secret writing, a notebook with instructions, a cipher notebook, a device for adjusting the receiver and spare batteries for it, a ballpoint pen for secret writing, a Minox camera and several spare cassettes for it inserted into the stereo headphone pad. In addition, Filatov was awarded 10,000 Algerian dinars for work in Algeria, 40 thousand rubles and 24 royal gold coins of 5 rubles each. In addition, the previously agreed amount in dollars was transferred monthly to Filatov's account in an American bank.

Returning to Moscow in August 1976, Filatov began working in the central office of the GRU and continued to actively transmit intelligence materials to the CIA through caches and letters. Since his arrival, he himself has received 18 radio messages from Frankfurt. Here are some of them:

“Do not limit yourself to collecting information that you have about the service. Win the trust of your close friends and acquaintances. Visit them at your place of work. Invite you to your home and restaurants, where, by means of targeted questions, find out secret information to which you yourself do not have access ... "

“Dear“ E ”! We are very pleased with your information and deeply thank you for it. It’s a pity that you don’t have access to classified documents yet. However, we are interested not only in what is labeled "Secret". Please provide details of the institution where you now work. By whom, when, for what purpose was it created? Departments, sections? The nature of submission up, down?

It’s a pity that you didn’t manage to use the lighter: its expiration date has expired. Get rid of her. It is best to throw it in a deep place in the river, when no one will be looking at you. Get a new one through the cache. "

Filatov did not forget about himself, having acquired a new car "Volga" and walking 40 thousand rubles in restaurants, which his wife did not know about. However, as in the case of Popov and Penkovsky, the CIA did not fully take into account the KGB's ability to spy on foreign and domestic citizens. Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1977, the KGB counterintelligence, as a result of monitoring the employees of the US Embassy, ​​found that the CIA station officers began to conduct secret operations with an agent located in Moscow.

At the end of March 1977, Filatov received a radiogram stating that instead of the Druzhba cache, another one, located on the Kostomarovskaya embankment and called the River, would be used to communicate with it. On June 24, 1977, Filatov was supposed to receive a container through this cache, but it was not there. There was no container in the cache and on June 26th. Then on June 28, Filatov, using a cover letter, informed the CIA about what had happened. In response to this alarming signal, Filatov after a while received the following answer:

“Dear“ E ”! We were not able to deliver at the "River" on June 25, as our man was under surveillance and it is clear that he did not even approach the place. Thank you for "Lupakov" letter (cover letter - author).

... If you have used some of the cassettes for operational photography, you can still develop them. Save them for your transfer to us at the place "Treasure". Also in your package for "Treasure", please inform us which camouflage device, not including lighters, you prefer for the mini-apparatus and cassettes that we may want to give you in the future. Since it was with the lighter, we again want you to have a camouflage device that hides your device and at the same time works correctly ...

New timetable: on Fridays 24.00 at 7320 (41 m) and 4990 (60 m) and on Sundays at 22.00 at 7320 (41 m) and 5224 (57 m). To improve the audibility of our radio broadcasts, we strongly advise you to use the 300 rubles included in this package for the purchase of "Riga-103-2" radio, which we have carefully checked and believe that it is good.

... In this package, we also included a small plastic transformation table with which you can decrypt our radio transmissions and encrypt your secret signature. Please handle it with care and store ...

(Hello. J. ")

Meanwhile, as a result of surveillance of an employee of the Moscow station of the CIA V. Kroket, who was listed as secretary-archivist, the KGB officers found out that he was using hiding places to communicate with Filatov. As a result, it was decided to detain him at the moment of placing the container in the cache. Late in the evening on September 2, 1977, during a secret operation on Kostomarovskaya embankment, Crockett and his wife Becky were detained red-handed. A few days later they were declared persona non grata and expelled from the country. Filatov himself was arrested a little earlier.

Filatov's trial began on July 10, 1978. He was accused of committing crimes under Articles 64 and 78 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (treason and smuggling). On July 14, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, chaired by Colonel of Justice M.A.Marov, sentenced Filatov to death.

However, the sentence was not carried out. After Filatov filed a petition for clemency, the death penalty was changed to 15 years in prison. Filatov served his term in correctional labor facility 389/35, better known as the Perm-35 camp. In an interview with French journalists who visited the camp in July 1989, he said: “I made big bets in my life and lost. And now I'm paying. This is quite natural. " When he was released, Filatov turned to the US Embassy in Russia with a request to compensate him for material damage and pay the amount in foreign currency that was supposed to be in his account in an American bank. However, the Americans at first avoided answering for a long time, and then told Filatov that only US citizens were entitled to compensation.

Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun was born in 1947 in an army garrison near Vladivostok in the family of a serviceman, veteran front-line soldier who went through the entire Great Patriotic War. At the age of 11, he entered the Kalinin Suvorov School, and then at the Kiev General command school... In the summer of 1968, he was appointed commander of a tank platoon in the troops of the Carpathian Military District. The unit in which he served, together with other troops of the district, took part in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. After the withdrawal of troops from Czechoslovakia, Rezun continued to serve in parts of the first Carpathian and then Volga military districts as commander of a tank company.

In the spring of 1969, Senior Lieutenant Rezun became a military intelligence officer in the 2nd (intelligence) directorate of the headquarters of the Volga Military District. In the summer of 1970, as a promising young officer, he was summoned to Moscow to enter the Military Diplomatic Academy. He successfully passed the exams and was enrolled in the first year. However, already at the beginning of his studies at the Academy, Rezun received the following characteristics:

“Volitional qualities, little life experience and experience of working with people are not sufficiently developed. Pay attention to the development of the qualities necessary for an intelligence officer, including willpower, perseverance, willingness to take reasonable risks. "

After graduating from the academy, Rezun was sent to the central office of the GRU in Moscow, where he worked in the 9th (information) department. And in 1974, Captain Rezun was sent on his first foreign mission to Geneva under the guise of the post of attaché of the USSR mission to the UN in Geneva. Together with him, his wife Tatyana and daughter Natalya, who was born in 1972, came to Switzerland. In the Geneva residency of the GRU, the work of Rezun at first was not at all as successful as can be judged from his book "Aquarium". This is what the resident gave him after the first year of staying abroad:

“He is very slowly mastering the methods of reconnaissance work. Works scattered and purposeless. Life experience and outlook are small. It will take a significant amount of time to overcome these shortcomings. ”

However, later, according to the testimony of the former deputy GRU resident in Geneva, Captain 1st Rank V. Kalinin, his affairs went well. As a result, he was promoted to diplomatic rank from attaché to third secretary, with a corresponding increase in salary, and, as an exception, his posting was extended for another year. As for Rezun himself, Kalinin speaks of him like this:

“In communicating with his comrades and in public life, [he] gave the impression of an archpatriot of his homeland and the armed forces, ready to lay his chest on the embrasure, as Alexander Matrosov did during the war years. In the party organization, he stood out among his comrades for his excessive activity in supporting any initiative decisions, for which he received the nickname Pavlik Morozov, which he was very proud of. Service relations were developing quite well ... At the end of the business trip, Rezun knew that his use was planned in the central office of the GRU. "

This was the state of affairs until June 10, 1978, when Rezun, along with his wife, daughter and son Alexander, born in 1976, disappeared from Geneva under unknown circumstances. Resident officers who visited his apartment found a real devastation there, and neighbors said that they heard muffled screams and children's crying at night. At the same time, valuable things did not disappear from the apartment, including a large collection of coins, the collection of which was fond of Rezun. The Swiss authorities were immediately notified of the disappearance of the Soviet diplomat and his family, with a simultaneous request to take all necessary measures to search for the missing. However, only 17 days later, on June 27, the Swiss political department informed the Soviet representatives that Rezun was in England with his family, where he had asked for political asylum.

The reasons that made Rezun commit betrayal are discussed in different ways. He himself in numerous interviews claims that his escape was forced. Here's what, for example, he told journalist Ilya Kechin in 1998:

“The situation with leaving is as follows. Then Brezhnev had three advisers: Comrades Alexandrov, Tsukanov and Blatov. They were called "Assistant Secretary General". What these "shura" brought him to sign, he signed. The brother of one of them - Aleksandrov Boris Mikhailovich - worked in our system, received the rank of major general, without ever going abroad. But in order to move further up the career ladder, he needed a record in his personal file that he went abroad. Of course, immediately a resident. And the most important residency. But he never worked either in pick-up, or in obtaining, or in processing information. To pursue a successful career, it was enough for him to be a resident for only six months, and in his personal file he would have a record: “I was a Geneva resident of the GRU”. He would return to Moscow, and new stars would rain down on him.

Everyone knew it would be a failure. But who could object?

Our resident was a man! One could pray for him. Before his departure to Moscow, he gathered us all together ... Throughout the station, we had a good drink and ate, and at the end of the booze, the resident said: “Guys! I'm leaving. I sympathize with you, the one who will work in the wings of the new resident: he will receive agents, the budget. I don’t know how it will end. I sympathize, but I can’t help. ”

And now three weeks have passed since the arrival of a new comrade - and a terrible failure. It was necessary to set someone up. I was the scapegoat. It is clear that over time the top would have figured it out. But at that moment I had no choice. There is only one way out - suicide. But if I had done that, they would have said about me later: “What a fool! It's not his fault! "And I left."

In another interview, Rezun emphasized that his flight was not connected with political reasons:

“I never said that I was running for political reasons. And I don't consider myself a political fighter. I had the opportunity to view the communist system and its leaders in Geneva from a minimum distance. I quickly and deeply hated this system. But there was no intention to leave. In “Aquarium” I just write: they stepped on the tail, that's why I'm leaving ”.

True, all of the above is not in agreement with the nickname Pavlik Morozov and the prospects for future career growth. However, the statements of a certain V. Kartakov that Rezun fled to the West because his cousin stole ancient coins of historical value in one of the Ukrainian museums, and he sold them in Geneva, as the competent authorities learned about, looks mild speaking unconvincingly. If only because V. Kalinin, who personally dealt with Rezun's case, claims that “no signals have been received regarding him by the 3rd Directorate of the USSR KGB (military counterintelligence) and the KGB department of the USSR KGB (counterintelligence of the PGU)”. Therefore, the most probable version is the version of the same V. Kalinin:

“As a person who is well acquainted with all the circumstances of the so-called 'Rezun Case' and who knew him personally, I believe that the British special services were involved in his disappearance ... One fact speaks in favor of this statement. Rezun was familiar with an English journalist, editor of a military-technical magazine in Geneva. We showed an operational interest in this man. I think that the counter-development was carried out by the British special services. An analysis of these meetings shortly before the disappearance of Rezun showed that in this duel the forces were unequal. Rezun was inferior in all respects. Therefore, it was decided to prohibit Rezun from meeting with an English journalist. Events showed that this decision was already taken late, and further development events got out of our control. "

On June 28, 1978, English newspapers reported that Rezun was in England with his family. Immediately the Soviet embassy in London received instructions to demand from the British Foreign Office a meeting with him. At the same time, letters to Rezun and his wife, written by their parents at the request of the KGB officers, were transferred to the British Foreign Ministry. But there was no answer to them, as well as the meeting of Soviet representatives with the fugitives. An attempt by Rezun's father, Bogdan Vasilyevich, who arrived in London in August to meet his son, also ended in failure. After that, all attempts to achieve a meeting with Rezun and his wife were stopped.

After the flight of Rezun in the Geneva station, emergency measures were taken to contain the failure. As a result of these forced measures, more than ten people were recalled to the USSR, and all operational ties of the residency were mothballed. The damage caused to the GRU by Rezun was significant, although it certainly cannot be compared with what was inflicted on Soviet military intelligence, for example, by Major General of the GRU Polyakov. Therefore, in the USSR, Rezun was tried in absentia by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and sentenced to death for treason.

Unlike many other defectors, Rezun wrote to his father several times, but his letters did not reach the addressee. The first letter that Rezun Sr. received came to him in 1990. More precisely, it was not a letter, but rather a note: "Mom, Dad, if you are alive, please respond," and the London address. And the first meeting of his son with his parents took place in 1993, when Rezun turned to the authorities of the already independent Ukraine with a request to allow his parents to visit him in London. According to his father, his grandchildren, Natasha and Sasha, are already students, and “Volodya himself, as always, works 16-17 hours a day. He is assisted by his wife Tanya, who keeps his card index and correspondence. "

Once in England, Rezun took up literary activity, acting as a writer Viktor Suvorov. The first books that came out from under his pen were "Soviet military intelligence", "Spetsnaz", "Tales of the Liberator." But the main work, he said, was The Icebreaker, a book dedicated to proving that the second world war started by the Soviet Union. According to Rezun, the first thought about this came to him in the fall of 1968, before the start of Soviet troops to Czechoslovakia. Since then, he has methodically collected all kinds of materials about the initial period of the war. By 1974, his library of military books numbered several thousand copies. Once in England, he again began to collect books and archival materials, as a result of which in the spring of 1989 the book “Icebreaker. Who started World War II? " Released first in Germany, and then in England, France, Canada, Italy and Japan, it instantly became a bestseller and caused extremely controversial reviews in the press and among historians. However, the coverage of the discussion as to whether the writer Suvorov is right or wrong is not part of the task of this essay. For those who are interested in this question, we can recommend the collection “Another War. 1939–1945 ”, published in Moscow in 1996, edited by Academician Y. Afanasyev.

In Russian, "Icebreaker" was first published in 1993 in Moscow, in 1994 the same publishing house published the sequel to "Icebreaker" "Day-M", and in 1996 the third book - "The Last Republic". In Russia, these books also caused a great resonance, and in early 1994, Mosfilm even began to shoot a feature-documentary-publicistic film based on Icebreaker. In addition to the above, Suvorov-Rezun is the author of the books "Aquarium", "Choice", "Control", "Purification".

Gennady Aleksandrovich Smetanin was born in the city of Chistopol into a working-class family, where he was the eighth child. After the eighth grade, he entered the Kazan Suvorov School, and then at the Kiev Higher Combined Arms Command School. After serving for some time in the troops, he was sent to the Military-Diplomatic Academy, where he studied French and Portuguese, after which he was assigned to the GRU. In August 1982, he was sent to Portugal to the Lisbon GRU residency under the guise of being a member of the military attaché's office.

All of Smetanin's colleagues noted his extreme selfishness, careerism and passion for profit. All this taken together and pushed him on the path of betrayal. At the end of 1983, he himself came to the CIA station and offered his services, demanding a million dollars for this. Amazed by his greed, the Americans resolutely refused to pay that kind of money, and he moderated his appetite to 360 thousand dollars, declaring that he had spent exactly this amount from state money. However, this statement by Smetanin also aroused suspicion among the CIA officers. However, he was paid money, not forgetting to take from him a receipt with the following content:

“I, Smetanin Gennady Aleksandrovich, received 365 thousand dollars from the American government, which I sign and promise to help him.”

When recruiting, Smetanin was tested on a lie detector. He "worthily" passed this test, and was included in the intelligence network of the CIA under the pseudonym "Million". In total, from January 1984 to August 1985, Smetanin held 30 meetings with CIA officers, at which he gave them intelligence information and photocopies of secret documents to which he had access. Moreover, with the help of Smetanin, on March 4, 1984, the Americans recruited his wife Svetlana, who, on the instructions of the CIA, got a job as a secretary-typist at the embassy, ​​which allowed her to gain access to classified documents.

Moscow learned about Smetanin's betrayal in the summer of 1985 from O. Ames. However, even before that, some suspicions arose in relation to Smetanin. The fact is that during one of the receptions at the Soviet embassy, ​​his wife appeared in dresses and jewelry that clearly did not correspond to her husband's official income. But in Moscow they decided not to rush things, especially since in August Smetanin was supposed to return to Moscow on vacation.

On August 6, 1985, Smetanin met in Lisbon with his CIA operator and said that he was going on vacation, but would return to Portugal long before the next meeting scheduled for October 4. Arriving in Moscow, he, along with his wife and daughter, went to Kazan, where his mother lived. After him went the KGB operational group, formed from the employees of the 3rd (military counterintelligence) and 7th (external surveillance) directorates, which included the fighters of the "A" group, whose task was to arrest the traitor.

Arriving in Kazan and visiting his mother, Smetanin suddenly disappeared with his family. Here is what the commander of one of the units of group "A", who worked on this case, says about this:

“One can imagine what, intelligently speaking, stupor seized everyone who was 'tied' to this person.

For several days we, as they say, dug the earth, “plowing” Kazan in all conceivable and inconceivable directions, exhausting ourselves and driving local employees to a sweat. I can still drive in Kazan thematic excursions... For example, this one: "Kazan checkpoints and entrances". And a few more of the same kind. "

At the same time, all suspicious persons who ordered air or train tickets for August 20-28 were tracked. As a result, it was established that someone had taken three tickets for August 25 for train No. 27 Kazan-Moscow from Yudino station. Since Smetanin's relatives lived in Yudino, it was decided that the tickets were purchased for him. Indeed, the passengers were Smetanin, his wife and schoolgirl daughter. No one wanted to take any more risks, and an order was given to arrest Smetanin and his wife. An employee of the KGB of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Colonel Yu.I. Shimanovsky, who participated in the capture of Smetanin, tells the following about his arrest:

“Suddenly, an object came out of the observed compartment and headed towards the toilet farthest from me. A few seconds later, our employee followed him. There was no one in the corridor. All the doors to the compartment were closed. Everything went so quickly that I just saw our operative, the one who was following, grabbed Smetanin from behind with a professional reception, lifted the second one, who was at his post, grabbed him by the legs and practically ran, they carried him to the rest compartment of the conductors. A woman and a man (employees of group “A” - authors) quickly got out of this compartment and went to where Smetanin's wife and his daughter were. All this happened practically without sound. "

After the arrest, Smetanin and his wife were shown an arrest warrant, after which their personal belongings and luggage were searched. During the search, a case with glasses was found in Smetanin's briefcase, which contained instructions for communicating with the CIA and a cipher pad. In addition, an ampoule with instant poison was hidden in the bow of the glasses. And during a search of Smetanin's wife, 44 diamonds were found in the lining of the leather strap.

During the investigation, the guilt of Smetanin and his wife was fully proven and the case was referred to the court. At the trial, Smetanin said that he did not feel enmity towards the Soviet social and state system, and that he betrayed his Motherland on the basis of dissatisfaction with his assessment as a scout. On July 1, 1986, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court found the Smetanins guilty of treason in the form of espionage. Gennady Smetanin was sentenced to death with confiscation of property, and Svetlana Smetanina was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Vyacheslav Maksimovich Baranov was born in 1949 in Belarus. After graduating from the 8th grade of school, he chose military career and entered the Suvorov School, and then - at the Chernigov Higher Military Flight School. Having received an officer's shoulder straps, he served in the army for several years. At this time, he, striving to make a career, read a lot, learned English language and even became the secretary of the party organization of the squadron. Therefore, when an order for a candidate for admission to the Military-Diplomatic Academy came to the aviation regiment in which Baranov served, the command settled on him.

While studying at the academy, Baranov successfully completed all the courses, but in 1979, just before graduation, he committed a serious offense, grossly violating the secrecy regime. As a result, although he was sent for further service in the GRU, he was "restricted to travel abroad" for five whole years. And only in June 1985, when the so-called perestroika began and everywhere they began to talk about "new thinking", Baranov went on his first foreign business trip to Bangladesh, where he worked in Dhaka under the "roof" of the head of a group of technical specialists.

In the fall of 1989, at the end of a four-year trip to Baranov, a CIA operative in Dhaka, Brad Lee Bradford, began to "pick up the keys". Once, after a volleyball match between the "near-Polish" national teams of the USSR and the USA, he invited Baranov to dinner at his villa. Baranov rejected this offer, but did not report it to his superiors. A few days later, Bradford repeated his invitation, and this time Baranov promised to think it over.

On October 24, 1989, Baranov called Bradford from the Lin Chin restaurant and made an appointment the next day. During the conversation, Bradford inquired about the financial situation of Soviet foreign workers during perestroika, to which Baranov replied that it was tolerable, but added that no one was against earning more. At the same time, he complained about the crampedness of his Moscow apartment and the illness of his daughter. Of course, Bradford hinted to Baranov that all this could be fixed and offered to meet again.

The second meeting between Baranov and Bradford took place three days later, on October 27. Going to her, Baranov was fully aware that they were trying to recruit him. But in the USSR, perestroika was in full swing, and he decided to insure himself for the future, having worked for two owners for some time. Therefore, the conversation between Bradford and Baranov was very specific. Baranov agreed to work for the CIA, making it a condition that he and his family be removed from the USSR to the United States. Here is what Baranov testified about the second meeting during the investigation:

“At the second meeting with Bradford in Dhaka, I asked what awaits me in the West. Bradford replied that after a fairly long and painstaking work with me (meaning, of course, the survey), my whole family and I will be given a residence permit, assistance in getting a job, finding housing in the selected area of ​​the United States, changing my appearance, if it is would need.

I asked: “What will happen if I refuse the survey?” Bradford, who had previously tried to speak softly and kindly, answered rather sharply and dryly, saying: “Nobody will force you. But in this case, our assistance will be limited to granting you and your family refugee status in the United States or in one of the European countries. Otherwise, you will be on your own "".

The final recruitment of Baranov took place during the third meeting, which took place on November 3, 1989. It was attended by the CIA resident in Dhaka V. Crockett, who at one time was the operator of another traitor from the GRU - A. Filatov - and in 1977 he was expelled from Moscow for actions incompatible with the status of a diplomat. During the meeting, the conditions were agreed upon on which Baranov agreed to work for the Americans - 25 thousand dollars for consent immediately, 2 thousand dollars a month for active work and 1 thousand dollars for forced downtime. In addition, the Americans pledged to withdraw him and his family from the USSR if necessary. True, Baranov received only 2 thousand dollars in his hands.

From that moment on, the new CIA agent, who received the pseudonym "Tony", began to work off his money and first of all told Crockett and Bradfrod about the structure, composition and leadership of the GRU, the area of ​​responsibility of operational directorates, the composition and tasks of the GRU and PGU KGB residencies in Dhaka used by the Soviet scouts cover positions. In addition, he spoke about the placement of the GRU and KGB residencies in the building of the Soviet embassy in Dhaka, the procedure for ensuring their security and the consequences of the recruiting approach of the Americans to one of the officers of the KGB PGU residency in Bangladesh. At the same meeting, the conditions for Baranov's connection with the CIA officers in Moscow were agreed.

A few days after the recruitment, Baranov returned to Moscow. After taking a vacation due to him, he began to work in a new place - under the "roof" of one of the divisions of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. And on June 15, 1990, he signaled to the Americans that they were ready to start active work: in a telephone booth near the Kirovskaya metro station, he scrawled on the phone a previously agreed non-existent number - 345-51-15. After that, on the agreed days, he went out three times to the meeting point agreed with Crockett with his Moscow operator, but to no avail. It was only on July 11, 1990 that Baranov met with the CIA Deputy Resident in Moscow Michael Salik, which took place on the Malenkovskaya railway platform. During this meeting, Baranov was given instructions for maintaining communications in two packages, an operational task concerning the collection of data on bacteriological preparations, viruses and microbes at the disposal of the GRU, and 2 thousand rubles for the purchase of a radio receiver.

Baranov diligently fulfilled all the tasks, but sometimes he was pursued by uniform bad luck. So, once, after laying a container with intelligence information in his cache, construction workers asphalted the place of laying and his work went to dust. Moreover, the Americans still did not contact him, but broadcast a message on the radio as many as 26 times. It said that the signal "Peacock", indicating Baranov's readiness for a personal meeting, was recorded by them, but they were unable to hold it because of the fire that took place on March 28, 1991 in the building of the US Embassy in Moscow.

Baranov's next and last meeting with a CIA officer took place in April 1991. On it, he was advised, if possible, not to use the hiding places anymore, to take instructions on the radio and paid 1,250 rubles to repair his personal Zhiguli car, which he had crashed in an accident. After this meeting, Baranov realized that his hopes of escaping from the USSR with the help of the CIA were unrealizable. Here's what he said about it during the investigation:

“Neither the conditions, nor the methods and terms of the possible removal of me and my family from the USSR were discussed with the Americans and they were not communicated to me. My question about a possible export scheme in both cases, both in Dhaka and in Moscow, was followed by assurances general... Let's say that an event of this kind is very difficult and requires a certain amount of time and effort to prepare. Like, such a scheme will be brought to me later ... Pretty soon I had serious doubts that such a scheme would ever be communicated to me, and now ... my doubts turned into confidence. "

By the end of the summer of 1992, Baranov's nerves could not stand it. Considering that he should have about 60 thousand dollars on an account in an Austrian bank, Baranov decides to illegally leave the country. Taking three days off at work on August 10, he bought a ticket for the Moscow-Vienna flight, having previously issued a fake passport for $ 150 through an acquaintance. But on August 11, 1992, when passing border control at Sheremetyevo-2, Baranov was arrested, and at the very first interrogation in the military counterintelligence he fully admitted his guilt.

There are several versions of how counterintelligence reached Baranov. The first was proposed by counterintelligence and boiled down to the fact that Baranov was identified as a result of spying on CIA officers in Moscow. According to this version, the surveillance officers in June 1990 drew attention to the interest of CIA operatives in Moscow in a telephone booth near the Kirovskaya metro station and, just in case, took it under control. After some time, Baranov was recorded in the booth, performing actions very similar to setting a prearranged signal. After some time, Baranov reappeared at the same booth, after which he was taken into operational development and at the time of an attempt to illegally leave the country was detained. According to the second version, Baranov came to the attention of counterintelligence after he sold his Zhiguli for 2,500 Deutschmarks, which in 1991 fell under Article 88 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The next version boils down to the fact that the border guards, having made sure that Baranov's passport was fake, detained the violator, and he, during interrogation in counterintelligence, simply got cold feet and split. But the fourth, the simplest version deserves the greatest attention: Baranov was passed by the same O. Ames.

After the arrest of Baranov, a long and scrupulous investigation began, during which he tried in every possible way to belittle the damage caused to him. So, he persistently convinced the investigators that all the information he had passed on to the CIA was “Open Secrets”, since the Americans had long known from other defectors, including D. Polyakov, V. Rezun, G. Smetanin and others. However, the investigators did not agree with him. According to the head of the FSB press service A. Mikhailov, during the investigation it was established that "Baranov handed over the intelligence network of his native GRU on the territory of other countries," the work of your department ". Due to the activities of Baranov, many agents were excluded from the current agent network and work with trusted persons, studied and developed, with whom he maintained contacts, was curtailed. In addition, the operational work of the officers of the GRU known to him, "deciphered" with his help by the Americans, was limited.

In December 1993, Baranov appeared before the Military Collegiums of the Court Russian Federation... As it was established by the court, part of the information transmitted by Baranov to the CIA was already known to him and, which was especially emphasized in the verdict, Baranov's actions did not entail the failure of the persons known to him. Taking these circumstances into account, the court chaired by Major General of Justice V. Yaskin on December 19, 1993 handed down an extremely lenient sentence to Baranov, sentencing him below the acceptable limit: six years in a strict regime colony with confiscation of the currency seized from him and half of his property. In addition, Colonel Baranov was not deprived of his military rank... Baranov was serving the term determined by the court in the "Perm-35" camp.

The beginning of this story should be looked for in 1992, when the decision of the acting. Russian Prime Minister E. Gaidar and Defense Minister P. Grachev The GRU Space Intelligence Center was allowed to sell slides made from films filmed by Soviet spy satellites in order to earn currency. The high quality of these images was widely known abroad, and therefore the price for one slide could reach 2 thousand dollars. One of those involved in the commercial sale of slides was Colonel Alexander Volkov, head of department of the Space Intelligence Center. Volkov, who had served in the GRU for over 20 years, was not involved in operational work. But in the field of reconnaissance space technology he was considered one of the leading specialists. So, he had more than twenty patents for inventions in this area.

Among those to whom Volkov sold the slides was a cadre of the Israeli intelligence MOSSAD in Moscow, who coordinated the activities of the Russian and Israeli intelligence services in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, Ruven Dinel, who was officially considered an adviser to the embassy. Volkov met with Dinel regularly, each time receiving approval from the management to meet. The Israeli bought from Volkov unclassified slides of images of the territory of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, allowed for sale, and he deposited the received money into the cashier of the Center.

In 1993, Volkov resigned from the GRU and became one of the founders and deputy director of the commercial association Sovinformsputnik, which is still the official and only GRU intermediary in the sale of commercial images. However, Volkov did not interrupt contacts with Dinel. Moreover, in 1994, with the help of Gennady Sporyshev, former senior assistant to the head of the department of the Space Intelligence Center, who by that time had also retired from the GRU, he sold Dinel 7 secret photographs depicting the cities of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Beer Sheva, Rehovot , Haifa and others. Later, Volkov and Sporyshev connected to their business another active employee of the Center - Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Tkachenko, who had access to a secret film library. He gave Volkov 202 secret slides, of which he sold 172 to Dinel. The Israelis did not remain in debt, and gave Volkov more than 300 thousand dollars for the sold slides. He did not forget to pay off his partners, giving Sporyshev 1600, and Tkachenko - 32 thousand dollars.

However, in 1995, the activities of Volkov and his partners attracted the attention of the military counterintelligence of the FSB. In September, Volkov's phone was tapped, and on December 13, 1995, at the Belorusskaya metro station, Volkov was detained by FSB officers at the moment when he was giving Dinel another 10 secret slides of Syrian territory.

Since Dinel had diplomatic immunity, he was declared persona non grata, and two days later he left Moscow. At the same time, Tkachenko and three more officers of the Space Intelligence Center were arrested, who were making the slides. Sporyshev, who tried to escape, was arrested a little later.

A criminal case was initiated against all the detainees on the fact of treason. However, the investigation failed to prove the guilt of Volkov and the three officers who helped make the slides. All of them claimed that they did not know about the secrecy of the pictures. At the request of the investigator, he deposited 345 thousand dollars, found during the search of Volkov's house, to the account of the state firm Metal-Business, which is a retraining center for officers established by the Ministry of Defense and the Hammer and Sickle plant. Regarding the sale of the pictures to Israel, he said: “Israel is our strategic partner, and Saddam is just a terrorist. I considered it my duty to help his opponents. " As a result, he and three other officers became witnesses in the case.

As for Sporyshev, he immediately confessed everything, provided all possible assistance to the investigation. Considering that he handed over to the MOSSAD slides of the territory of Israel and thus did not cause much damage to the country's security, the court of the Moscow Military District sentenced Sporyshev for disclosing state secrets(Article 283 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) to 2 years conditionally.

Tkachenko was the least fortunate. He was accused of selling 202 secret photographs to MOSSAD. During the investigation, he fully admitted his guilt, but at the trial, which began in March 1998, he refused his testimony, saying: “The investigators deceived me. They said that they just needed to get Dinel out of the country, and I had to help. I helped. " Tkachenko's trial lasted two weeks and on March 20 a sentence was announced - three years in prison.

So this rather unusual story ended. Its unusualness is not at all in the fact that three special service officers earned money on state secrets, but in their strange punishment - some were convicted, while others were witnesses in the same case. It was not for nothing that Tkachenko's lawyers, after the verdict was passed on him, stated that the case of their client was sewn with white thread and that “the FSB, most likely, had a goal to cover up its own man who leaked disinformation to the MOSSAD”.

These are typical stories of the betrayal committed by the GRU officers in 1950-1990. As you can see from the above examples, only D. Polyakov with a big stretch can be considered "a fighter against the totalitarian communist regime." All the others have embarked on this slippery path for reasons that are very far from ideological, such as: greed, cowardice, dissatisfaction with their position, etc. However, this is not surprising, since people serve in intelligence, and they, as you know, happen different. And so we can only hope that there will be no people like the ones we just told about in the Russian military intelligence.

Notes:

Cit. Quoted from: Andrew K., Gordievsky O. KGB. History of foreign policy operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. M., 1992.S. 390.

The illegal resident heads the network of agents and has his own communication channels with Moscow, independent of the communication system used by the station officers operating under the cover of the Soviet embassy or other official representations, such as, for example, the Soviet mission to the UN.

The Soviet "diamond" of the CIA ...

The Soviet "diamond" of the CIA ...

Chernov himself is sure that Polyakov, who at that time worked as a deputy resident of the GRU in New York, pointed out to him to the FBI agents. He said that the FBI agents showed him three photographs taken, apparently, with a miniature camera, which depicted the corridors of the GRU and KGB residencies, as well as the referents of the Soviet mission to the UN in New York. On the photographs, arrows were drawn near each office with the names of employees, including Chernov himself.

V. Klimov “The one who and own mother will lay for half a liter. " Rossiyskaya Gazeta, April 18, 1996.

Earley P. Confession of a Spy. M., 1998.

Zaitsev V. Capture. Security Service, No. 2, 1993.

Stepenin M. GRU officers sold state secrets to Mossad. Kommersant-Daily, March 21, 1998.

History is full of traitors. Someone went over to the enemy side because of money, someone for moral or, as they say now, ideological reasons.

But there are also cases when treason to their rulers, their state system, their people, is dictated by a burning and old as humanity feeling - revenge.

Dmitry Polyakov's military career began on June 22, 1941. After studying for two years at an artillery school, he was urgently exiled to the front, to repulse the fascist invaders. Despite his young age (at that time Dmitry was only 20 years old), he entered the battles as an officer, had his own mortar battery at his disposal.

For courage he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, had more than one medal. In the 44th year, fate brought together the then intelligence department of the USSR, where in a young military man they noticed the necessary qualities for an agent - diligence, perseverance, patience and a desire to give all of themselves to work. But, having familiarized himself with the basics of espionage, his artillery talents were again needed at the front. I had to forget about espionage. But with the end of the Second World War, training has already gone, as they say, in full.

Do you consider the general a traitor?

YESNO

In the 51st year he was sent to serve in the camp of the main enemy. Soviet Union- USA. But, despite the demonstrated diligence, obedience and flexible mind, he worked there more as an assistant to real residents than he himself became one of their number.

His duties included the transfer of important information to the agents of the USSR, by laying hiding places, opening these hiding places if the information needed to be taken, creating a cover for spies, shaking down various diplomatic and bureaucratic commotions that accompanied the stay of Soviet GRU workers in America.

Arrest of the traitor

Despite the fact that Dmitry Polyakov was not at the very edge of spy games, his work required a lot of dedication, diligence and attentiveness. As an employee, he was highly valued, because during the years of service he had never pierced.

Price issue: a child's life and $ 400

During the service Dmitry had a son. But the happiness did not last long. A few months later, the child was diagnosed with an intractable disease. An urgent operation and medical care were required. But Polyakov had no money for upkeep in an American hospital.

Expert opinion

Ivan Fedorovich Schwartz

Analyst and one of the leaders of the branch of internal research of secret affairs at the Committee of Information under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Then he first asked for money from his immediate superior, and when he refused, referring to the need for permission from the Center, he asked to send a request there.

But the answer stunned Polyakov - they refused to issue the money, and the son was ordered to be taken to Moscow for an operation. In preparation for the flight, the child died. His death made an indelible impression on Dmitry. And the amount required was not very big, even by the standards of the 50s - 400 evergreens.

First contact

In 61st, Polyakov personally contacted the FBI agent and requested a meeting with a high-ranking official of the Bureau for the transmission of particularly important information.

In the courtroom

We met with him and immediately went carte blanche - they demanded to surrender the names of the workers of the encryption intelligence service of the USSR in the States. The fact is that at first the Americans did not believe that such a high-ranking intelligence officer of the Union (and at that time Polyakov had the rank of colonel) wants to work for his opponent, especially since he is an ardent Stalinist.

When asked about the reasons for his decision, Dmitry replied that he despises Khrushchev as a politician, and believes that after the firm rule of Joseph Vissarionovich, he will not be able to adhere to the course necessary for the state. At least he did not lie about his dislike for Sergei Nikitich. And he did not tell about the death of his son.

And it drove him to his grave

Fruitful cooperation lasted until the 86th year. During this time, Dmitry Polyakov managed to rise to the rank of Major General of the GRU (not without some assistance their American counterparts), as well as hand over more than 15,000 Soviet intelligence agents to the West! During this time, he turned not just into a valuable cadre, but into one of the most influential people in the American spy network, whose opinion was listened to and taken into account during the planning of the operation against the USSR.

In America

But in the 86th, the unexpected happened - the head of the CIA department in charge of the Soviet Union, the notorious Aldrich Ames, issued the names of 25 US "moles" to the Soviet government. Dmitry Polyakov was the first on this list. In the same 86th he was arrested, and two years later they carried out the death sentence, because treason is punishable by death.

Conclusion

Polyakov did not betray his country for money - in comparison with others, they paid him little.

Expert opinion

Oleg Belozerov

He worked at the YUZHMASH plant for 35 years. Developed rockets for space flight.

It is not known whether he was guided by ideological motives and whether hostility to Khrushchev could have pushed him to such an act.

Most likely, it was the anger at the leadership because of the death of his son that led Dmitry to the path of betrayal. Well, it is not for us to judge - he made his choice, and the consequences for him suffered. Let it stay that way.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dmitry Fedorovich Polyakov
Occupation:

US spy, former Major General (Lieutenant General?) Of the GRU

Awards and prizes:

The Order of the Patriotic War and the Red Star; in 1988 deprived of all state awards

Dmitry Fedorovich Polyakov (1921-1988) - former Major General (according to other sources, Lieutenant General) of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff Armed Forces USSR, shot by a court sentence for espionage in favor of the United States (in 1988, by a court sentence, he was stripped of his military rank and all state awards).

Dmitry Fedorovich Polyakov was born in 1921 in Ukraine. After graduating from high school in 1939, he entered the artillery school. Member of the Great Patriotic War, fought in Karelian and Western fronts... For courage and heroism he was awarded the Orders of the Patriotic War and the Order of the Red Star.

In the postwar years he graduated from the Frunze Academy, General Staff courses and was sent to the Main Intelligence Directorate. From May 1951 to July 1956, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he worked in the United States under the guise of an officer for assignments at the USSR mission in the UN Military Staff Committee. In those years, Polyakov gave birth to a son, who three months later fell ill with an intractable disease. To save the child, a complex operation costing $ 400 was needed.
Polyakov did not have enough money, and he turned for material assistance to the resident of the GRU, Major General I. A. Sklyarov. He made a request to the Center, but the GRU leadership refused this request. The Americans, in turn, offered Polyakov to operate on his son in a New York clinic "in exchange for some services" in the United States.
Polyakov refused, and the son soon died.

In 1959 he returned to New York with the rank of colonel under the guise of the post of head of the secretariat of the USSR representative office at the UN Military Staff Committee (real position - Deputy GRU resident for illegal work in the United States).

On November 8, 1961, on his own initiative, he offered to cooperate with the FBI, naming at the first meeting six names of encryptors who worked in Soviet foreign missions in the United States. Later he explained his act by ideological disagreement with the political regime in the USSR. During one of the interrogations, he said that he wanted to "help Western democracy to avoid the onslaught of Khrushchev's military and foreign policy doctrine." The FBI assigned DF Polyakov the operational pseudonym "Tophat" ("Cylinder"). At the second meeting with the FBI on November 26, 1961, he named 47 names of Soviet intelligence officers of the GRU and KGB who were working in the United States at that time. At a meeting on December 19, 1961, he reported information about the GRU illegal immigrants and the officers who kept in touch with them. At a meeting on January 24, 1962, he betrayed the American GRU agents, the rest of the Soviet illegal immigrants, whom he had not mentioned at the previous meeting, the officers of the New York GRU station who worked with them, gave tips on some officers for their possible recruitment. At a meeting on March 29, 1962, he identified in photographs of Soviet diplomats and employees of Soviet missions in the United States, shown by FBI agents, intelligence officers of the GRU and KGB known to him. At the last meeting on June 7, 1962, he betrayed the illegal Macy (GRU Captain Maria Dmitrievna Dobrova) and handed over to the FBI a re-shot secret document “GRU. An Introduction to Organizing and Conducting Covert Work, ”later included in the FBI Counterintelligence Training Manual as a separate section. He agreed to cooperate in Moscow with the US CIA, where he was given the operational pseudonym "Bourbon". On June 9, 1962, Colonel DF Polyakov sailed from the shores of the United States on the steamer Queen Elizabeth.

Soon after his return to Moscow, Polyakov was appointed senior officer of the 3rd Directorate of the GRU. From the position of the Center, he was assigned to oversee the activities of the GRU intelligence apparatus in New York and Washington. It was planned for the third business trip to the United States as a senior assistant to the military attaché at the USSR embassy in Washington. He carried out several secret operations in Moscow, transferring classified information to the CIA (in particular, he re-shot and transferred the telephone directories of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the GRU). After the mention of Polyakov's surname in the Los Angeles Times, the GRU leadership found it impossible to further use Polyakov along the American line in the report on the trial of the illegal Sanins extradited to him by the Sanins. Polyakov was transferred to the GRU directorate, which was engaged in intelligence in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 1965, he was appointed military attaché at the USSR Embassy (GRU resident) in Burma. In August 1969 he returned to Moscow, where in December he was appointed acting head of the direction, which was engaged in the organization of intelligence work in the PRC and the preparation of illegal immigrants for transfer to this country. Then he became the head of this direction.

In 1973 he was sent as a resident to India, in 1974 he was promoted to major general. In October 1976, he returned to Moscow, where he was appointed head of the third intelligence department of the AFA, remaining on the approved list of the reserve of appointment to the positions of military attaché and resident of the GRU. In mid-December 1979, he again left for India for the former position of military attaché at the USSR embassy (senior operational chief of the GRU intelligence apparatus of the General Staff in Bombay and Delhi, in charge of strategic military intelligence in the South-Eastern region).

In 1980 he retired for health reasons. After retiring, General Polyakov began working as a civilian in the GRU personnel department, gaining access to the personal files of all employees.

He was arrested on July 7, 1986. On November 27, 1987, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was sentenced to death. The verdict was carried out on March 15, 1988. Official information about the sentence and its execution appeared in the Soviet press only in 1990. And in May 1988, US President Ronald Reagan, during negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev, voiced a proposal from the American side to pardon D. Polyakov, or exchange him for one of the Soviet intelligence officers arrested in the United States, but the request was late.

According to the main version, the reason for exposing Polyakov was the information of the then CIA officer Aldrich Ames or the FBI officer Robert Hanssen, who collaborated with the KGB of the USSR.

According to the information available in open sources, during the period of cooperation, he transferred to the CIA information about nineteen Soviet illegal intelligence agents operating in Western countries, about one hundred and fifty foreigners who collaborated with the intelligence services of the USSR and about 1,500 active employees of the USSR intelligence services. In total - 25 boxes of classified documents from 1961 to 1986.

Gave out Polyakov and strategic secrets. Because of his information, the United States learned about the contradictions between the CPSU and the CCP. He also gave out the secrets of ATGMs, which helped the US Army during Operation Desert Storm to successfully counter the anti-tank guided missiles in service with the Iraqis.

The information provided by Polyakov was invaluable, and the damage inflicted on the Soviet Union amounted to many billions of dollars.

The motives for Polyakov's betrayal have not been fully clarified. Money was not the main reason. While working for the CIA, Bourbon received less than $ 100,000 - a ridiculous amount for a super agent. The Americans believed he was disillusioned with the Soviet regime. The blow for Polyakov was the debunking of the cult of Stalin, whom he idolized. Polyakov himself said the following about himself during the investigation: “At the heart of my betrayal lay both my desire to openly express my views and doubts somewhere, and the qualities of my character - a constant desire to work beyond risk. And the more the danger became, the more interesting my life became ... I was used to walking on the edge of a knife and could not imagine another life for myself. "

No matter how much the string twists ...

A natural question arises, how did Polyakov manage to work for the CIA for a quarter of a century and remain undetected? Numerous failures of illegal immigrants abroad intensified the activities of the KGB counterintelligence. Colonel O. Penkovsky, Colonel P. Popov, who had extradited Soviet illegal immigrants in Western European countries to the CIA, and GRU officer A. Filatov were arrested and then shot. Polyakov turned out to be smarter, he was thoroughly aware of the methods and techniques,
used by the KGB to identify enemy agents, and for a long time was above suspicion. In Moscow, to maintain contact with the Americans, he used only contactless methods - special containers made in the form of a piece of brick, which he left in predetermined places. To signal that the cache had been planted, Polyakov, as he passed the trolleybus past the US Embassy in Moscow, activated a miniature transmitter hidden in his pocket. This technical novelty, in the West it was called "Brest", in an instant threw out a huge amount of information that entered the American residency.
The KGB radio intercept service detected these radio signals, but could not decipher them.

Meanwhile, the circle of GRU officers suspected of treason was gradually narrowing. The work of all intelligence officers and agents arrested by the Americans was subjected to the most thorough analysis. In the end it became clear that only one person, Major General Polyakov, could know and betray them. It is possible that Aldridge Ames, a senior CIA officer who worked for the KGB, and Robert Hanssen, an analyst for the Soviet FBI department, played a role in exposing Polyakov.
By the way, both were subsequently sentenced in the United States to life imprisonment.

Dmitry Polyakov - the diamond of American intelligence

Major General (according to some sources, Lieutenant General) of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the USSR Ministry of Defense Dmitry Polyakov worked for the CIA for 25 years and practically paralyzed the work of Soviet intelligence in the American direction. Polyakov betrayed 19 illegal Soviet intelligence officers, more than 150 agents from among foreign citizens, revealed that about 1,500 active intelligence officers belonged to the GRU and KGB. Former CIA chief James Woolsey admitted that "of all the US secret agents recruited during the Cold War, Polyakov was the jewel in the crown."

At the end of 1986, Polyakov was arrested. During a search at his Moscow apartment, secret writing devices, cipher pads and other spy equipment were found. "Bourbon" did not deny, he went to cooperate with the investigation, hoping for leniency. Polyakov's wife and adult sons were seen as witnesses, since they did not know or suspect about his espionage activities. In the GRU at this time, stars were raining down from the shoulder straps of employees, whose negligence and talkativeness were skillfully used by the Bourbon. Many have been dismissed or fired. In early 1988, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced DF Polyakov for treason and espionage to execution with confiscation of property. The verdict was carried out on March 15, 1988. This is how it ended life path one of the biggest traitors in the history of Soviet intelligence.

Alexander Ostrovsky

No. 26, 2011. Date of publication: 01.07.2011

Rg-rb.de ›index.php ...

To deflect suspicion from Polyakov, two Soviet employees of the UN Secretariat were arrested on espionage charges. And then the FBI announced that they had extradited the Sokolovs. And only after many years did the truth prevail. Polyakov played a fatal role in the life of the scout Maria Dobrova. This beautiful, elegant woman ran a fashionable beauty salon in New York City. Her clients were the wives of many high-ranking officials, including the sailors of the nuclear submarine fleet.
Dobrova's merit in preventing (and this was the main task of military intelligence) a sudden nuclear strike on the Soviet Union is beyond doubt. When the FBIs came to arrest her, Maria committed suicide by jumping out of the window of a high-rise building. After a while, Polyakov reported to the center that Dobrova had been recruited by the Americans, who reliably hid her. For many years, the brave scout was considered a defector.

The times of the Cold War are strikingly different from our days. This now-disclosed agent of the Russian special services Anna Chapman, who operated in America along with nine more of her colleagues, was exchanged for four Russian citizens accused of espionage, and became the heroine of glossy magazines and television programs. And then the fate of many intelligence officers, extradited by Polyakov, turned out to be tragic. Some of them died or received long prison terms, some were recruited.

Exceptionally valuable Soviet intelligence agents working in South Africa were the spouses Dieter Felix Gerhardt and Ruth Johr, who were friends with the family of President Pieter Willem Botha. Dieter, a naval officer of the South African Navy, was supposed to be awarded the rank of Rear Admiral, he had access to a super-secret NATO naval base that controls Soviet ships and by planes. When the CIA, on a tip from Polyakov, arrested Gerhardt and presented the details of his Moscow dossier, he confessed to espionage. The scout was sentenced to life imprisonment and released only in 1992 at the personal request of Boris N. Yeltsin. Subsequently, being the head of the intelligence department of the Military-Diplomatic Academy, Polyakov will transfer the lists of his listeners to the Americans. Already retired, "Bourbon" - this pseudonym was assigned to him by the CIA - remained to work in the GRU as the secretary of the party committee of the department. According to the established practice, illegal scouts remained on the party account at their place of work. According to their registration cards, the general calculated the intelligence agents being introduced.
Did he feel sorry for betraying his former colleagues? It is unlikely that espionage and morality are incompatible things.

The purpose of this article is to find out how the rather long RETURN to the traitor-general POLYAKOV is incorporated into his FULL NAME code.

Watch preliminary "Logicology - about the fate of man".

Consider the tables of the FULL NAME code. \ If on your screen there is an offset of numbers and letters, adjust the scale of the image \.

16 31 43 75 86 101 104 109 122 132 151 168 178 188 209 216 221 236 253 268 271 281 305
P O L I K O V D M I T R I J F Y D O R O V I Ch
305 289 274 262 230 219 204 201 196 183 173 154 137 127 117 96 89 84 69 52 37 34 24

5 18 28 47 64 74 84 105 112 117 132 149 164 167 177 201 217 232 244 276 287 302 305
D M I T R I J F Y D O R O V I Ch P O L Z K O V
305 300 287 277 258 241 231 221 200 193 188 173 156 141 138 128 104 88 73 61 29 18 3

POLYAKOV DMITRY FYODOROVICH = 305 = 132-DEPARTURE + 173-GUNSHOT.

305 = 52-KILLED + 253-IN THE HEAD BY SHOTS FROM NAGAN.

305 = 122-LIFE RIPPED \ al \ + 183-LIFE WRONG.

183 - 122 = 61 = PALBA.

305 = 172- (64-EXECUTION + 108-SHOOTING) + 133-ACT OF RETURN.

305 = 178- (76-retaliation + 102-shot) + 127-SHOTS.

305 = 216- (137-DOED + 79-FOR EXECUTION) + 89-KILLED.

305 = 216- (152-DOED TO ... + 64-EXECUTION) + 89-KILLED.

305 = 104-KILLED + 201- (154-SHOT + 47-KILLED, SLASH).

201 - 104 = 97 = JUDGMENT.

305 = 221- (67-EXECUTION + 154-SHOT) + 84-END.

221 - 84 = 137 = FATED.

Let's decrypt individual columns:

132 = LIFE
___________________________________
183 = 89-KILLED + 94-KILLER

183 - 132 = 51 = KILLED.

178 = 76-retaliation + 102-shot
_____
137 = FATED

178 - 137 = 41 = NOT LIVING.

168 = SHOT FROM NAGAN
________________________________
154 = SHOT

253 = INTENTIONAL KILL IN ...
_______________________________________
69 = HEAD

253 - 69 = 184 = DEATH PENALTY.

177 = 108-SHOT + 69-END
_____________________________________
138 = DYING

74 = RIGHT
_______
241 = 64-EXECUTION + 108-SHOOTING + 69-END

105 = 42-BRAIN + 63-DEATH
_____________________________________
221 = PENETRATING WOUND

221 - 105 = 116 = 64-EXECE + 52-KILLED = SHOOTED \ th \.

117 = SHOT \ and \
______________________________________
193 = 66-KILL + 127-SHOTS

193 - 117 = 76 = RETURN.

221 = 132-DEPARTURE + 89-KILLED
_________________________________________
89 = KILLED

132 = LIFE
_________________________________________
183 = 132-DEPARTURE + 51-KILLED

164 = GUNSHOT
______________________________
156 = LIFE DEPRECATED

EXECUTION DATE code: 03/15/1988. This is = 15 + 03 + 19 + 88 = 125 = 56-EXECUTION + 69-END.

305 = 125 + 180- (76-retaliation + 104-murdered).

Code of the full DATE OF EXECUTION = 202-FIFTEEN MARCH + 107- \ 19 + 88 \ - \ code of the YEAR OF EXECUTION \ = 309.

309 = PUNISHED TO BE SHOT = 201-LETHAL EXIT + 108-SHOOTING.

Number code full YEARS LIFE = 177-SIXTY + 97-SIX = 274.

274 = 154-SHOT + 120-END OF LIFE.

305 = 274-SIXTY SIX + 31-ACT, CM \ crap \.

This "mole", during his twenty-five years of treacherous activity on foreign intelligence services, turned over over 1,500 GRU agents to the FBI and the CIA. It is believed that the death of his three-month-old son pushed General Polyakov to cooperate with the Western special services - the Main Intelligence Directorate "squeezed" $ 400 for an operation on the child, and this was a big blow for Dmitry Fedorovich.

Was a scout since the war

The beginning of the career of the future traitor was quite successful - DF Polyakov after school studied at an artillery school, fought from the first day of the Great Patriotic War. He fought, judging by the orders of the Patriotic War and the Red Star, with dignity. He was demobilized as a major, the last place of service was the branch office of the army headquarters. In 1942 Polyakov joined the party.
After the war, DF Polyakov studied at the Frunze Academy, at the General Staff courses, after which he was sent to serve in the GRU.

Why did a promising specialist go for it?

Until the 60s, an officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate worked in America in the Soviet Union's mission to the United Nations Military Staff Committee. Polyakov's three-month-old son fell ill, he needed to undergo an urgent operation, which cost $ 400. Not having such a sum, Dmitry Fyodorovich wanted to borrow it from the GRU resident I. A. Sklyarov. But he, having contacted the Center, received a refusal "from above". The boy died as a result.
Historians of the special services believe that the ardent Stalinist Polyakov had long wanted to annoy the Khrushchev regime, who had debunked the cult of the "father of nations", and the death of his son only catalyzed the process of betrayal.

Whom and to whom he handed over

It is believed that D.F.Polyakov made his first step towards betrayal in November 1961, when he approached an FBI officer with an offer of cooperation. The scout by that time was the GRU's deputy resident for illegal work in America. First, Polyakov handed over to US internal intelligence a few cryptographers who were working undercover in the Soviet missions in America.
The GRU "mole" worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the operational pseudonym "Tophat" (translated from English "cylinder"). Two weeks after the first contact with the FBI, a second, more "productive" one took place - Polyakov handed over almost 50 of his colleagues and KGB agents who were operating in America at that time. Subsequently, the traitor "leaked" to the American special service information about illegal agents of the Soviet intelligence, prompting which of them could be recruited. He handed over secret documents, which were later used as teaching aids at the FBI.
Less than a year after starting work for the FBI, DF Polyakov began to cooperate with the CIA.

Double Bourbon

Under this operational pseudonym, Polyakov worked for the CIA from the beginning of June 1962. Meanwhile, his career in the GRU was growing rapidly. "Mole" oversaw the intelligence apparatus of the special services in New York and Washington. When in Moscow, Polyakov transferred secret documents and valuable information through hiding places. Thus he facilitated the transfer to the West of the telephone directories of the military General Staff and his own organization.
When one of the American newspapers, in an article about the trial of those whom Polyakov had betrayed, mentioned himself, the GRU officer in America was no longer allowed. Later, the "mole" was involved in the organization and control of residency in the Afro-Asian direction, in the 70s he worked in India, taught at the Military Diplomatic Academy.

How he was exposed

After retiring in 1980, Polyakov continued to work in the personnel department of the GRU as a civilian and for another 6 years did not stop regularly supplying the CIA with classified information, to which he now had access.
It was possible to uncover it already with the help of one of the American "moles" from the CIA, recruited by Soviet intelligence. In July 1986, Polyakov was arrested, tried and sentenced to capital punishment. In the early spring of 1988, the "mole" was shot. It was said that in May of the same year Reagan himself asked Gorbachev for Polyakov. But the US President was two months late.
It is estimated that in a quarter of a century of his betrayal, Polyakov handed over to Western intelligence a total of over 20 boxes of classified documents and handed over more than 1,600 agents of the Soviet special services.